Chapter 14: Three Hundred Wolves

"The Crown eats packs," I repeated.

"Yes."

"Then say that to everyone it's supposed to eat."

My father blinked.

I stood up from the healer's table, and I took the green ledger under my arm.

"Junie. Ring the bell."

Junie looked at me for one second.

Then she ran out past his elbow, across the yard to the iron bell on the clinic porch, and began to pull the rope.

The sound rolled across the pack lands, three long strokes and a pause, the signal for every wolf to come to the hall.

My father did not stop me.

He followed.

The Garrow hall was a long room of black beams, with a dais at one end and a carved chair on it that had held four Alphas before him.

The pack came in at a walk, then at a run.

Mill hands with sawdust on their sleeves, women from the bakery, clinic aides, the old men from the card table.

Three hundred wolves, and I had known most of them since I was born.

They filled the benches and the aisles, and they looked at me.

Maxine the scentless.

I stepped onto the dais.

Elias stayed at the back wall by the doors, his arms folded, and gave me nothing but his steady dark eyes.

"I've been given a cup of tea every morning for twelve years," I said.

The hall rustled.

"I was told it was for my blood.

I want you to hear what's in it from the woman who made it."

The healer came up the aisle on Junie's arm.

She stopped at the foot of the dais and her voice shook, but she said it.

Moon lichen.

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