Chapter 18: Dinner at Redmoon

The invitation came the next morning, on the same cream card with the gold edge.

Alpha Prentiss and his wife requested the Crown and the Crown's wife at supper, "to settle our differences as wolves do, at one table."

Three other names were written under it by hand.

The Alphas of Maple Run, Eastwater and the Black Pines.

"Those are the three votes he needs," Elias said.

"Then he's inviting them to watch him be reasonable."

"He is."

"And we're going to watch him fail."

Elias folded the card.

"You don't have to go."

"If I don't, three Alphas hear it from him instead of from me."

So I went.

I wore the black column again, with Junie's borrowed silver comb in my hair.

Elias wore the charcoal suit.

Junie rode in the back seat, because Elias had insisted on a witness who was not on his payroll, and because she had refused to be left behind.

The Redmoon dining room was a long, high-ceilinged hall with a table set for twelve.

Candles ran down the center, and the Alpha of Maple Run, a broad woman with iron-grey braids, was already seated.

The other two came in behind us.

Brant sat at his father's right hand.

He did not look at me, and he did not touch his food.

Sylvie sat beside him in cream silk, with the little gold moon at her throat.

She smiled at me.

It was the smile she had worn in the powder room on Claiming Night, soft and kind.

"I'm so glad we're all friends," she said. "I've missed you, Maxine."

"I'm sure."

The soup came, and Alpha Prentiss talked easily about river rights and grazing quotas and the winter of his father's father.

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