Chapter 6: Walk It

"Yes," I said. "I was."

Tiernan set the letter down on the desk very carefully.

"Then who wrote it?"

"Who did you give the patrol schedule to, Tiernan?"

He didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

There had only ever been two people, and one of them had been holding his hand.

"Ask your Beta," I said.

I walked out and left him standing there with my letters.

I didn't sleep.

Neither, I found out later, did he.

The Midwinter feast was the next night.

Every wolf in Ashenveil came, and every visiting pack at the Council.

The long tables groaned with roast elk and bread and pine-nut cakes.

Five years ago I had baked half those cakes.

Tonight I sat at the Council table beside Theron, in the iron crown, and didn't touch one.

Imogen sat at the high table in pale blue silk.

Every few minutes she glanced at me and smiled.

Garrick sat beside her with his big silver ring on his finger, laughing too loudly at everything.

Tiernan's chair was empty.

Halfway through the meal, the doors at the back opened.

Tiernan walked in.

He wasn't dressed for a feast.

He wore the same shirt from last night, rolled at the sleeves.

He walked past the high table without looking at it.

He stopped in the middle of the hall, in the open space before the Moon Stone.

The music stuttered and died.

"Five years ago," he said, "I stood at that stone and called Selene Vaughn a traitor."

Nobody so much as lifted a fork.

"I read three letters," he said. "I believed them. I never checked a single date."

He took one of the letters out of his shirt pocket and held it up.

"This one is dated the night my father died. Half this pack saw her in that room."