Chapter 8: The Elders

The Hargrove pack hall was a long timber building at the edge of town, with a fire pit in the middle and benches on three sides.

Sixty people were waiting.

They fell silent when Rhys walked in with me beside him.

I wore a borrowed black sweater and my own jeans, and I kept my chin up.

Five elders sat at a table at the far end.

The oldest was a stout woman with white braids, and she did not stand.

"Sit," she said, and pointed at a bench in the center of the room, alone.

Rhys didn't sit.

"She'll stand beside me," he said.

"She'll answer our questions on her own."

"Then I'll stand behind her."

He did, and I felt him close at my back.

Across the hall, on the other side of the fire, Conrad Dunleavy rose from his bench.

I had not seen him in six years.

He was silver at the temples now, and as handsome as ever, with the same warm gaze I had once run to when I fell off my bike.

"Willa," he said, and his voice cracked just right. "My girl. Thank God you're safe."

My throat closed.

He had signed the paper that threw me out, and I still wanted to run to him.

I listened for his heart.

It was steady.

It did not skip or race, even when he stepped closer and put his hand on my shoulder.

"You look thin, sweetheart. Are they feeding you?"

"They are," I said.

"I worried. We all did."

Sabrina sat at the end of his bench, holding her phone against her chest.

She smiled at me with her lips closed.

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