Chapter 20: The Stone

My father's great hall had not changed.

The same long tables ran down both sides.

The same candles burned in iron rings under the rafters.

At the far end, on its low dais, stood the stone.

It was waist-high and dark, veined with silver.

A shallow bowl was worn into the top by a thousand years of hands.

I had last stood in front of it in a silver-gray dress, and nothing had answered me.

Tonight I walked in through the main doors under my own name.

My hair was dark and cropped, and my steel pen was in my fist.

Cade walked at my left shoulder.

Tilly was on my right, and Hedda walked behind her in her nurse's coat.

The girl in the gray hoodie came last.

The hall went silent in a wave from the door to the dais.

Heads turned, and I smelled shock and fear and curiosity, a hundred wolves breathing me in.

"That's the girl," someone whispered. "That's the runaway."

"That's the Alpha's daughter," said someone else, and the whisper spread.

My father sat in the high chair with the elders on either side.

Anson sat at the end of the first table, perfectly composed, in a charcoal suit.

The Marlowe heir was beside him with his arm in a sling.

My mother sat in the front row.

She did not look at me.

"Freja Soderstrom," the eldest elder said, and his voice shook very slightly. "You come before the stone."

"I do."

"Under your own name, and of your own will."

"Yes."

"Then drink from the pack's cup," my father said.

"And put your hand to the renunciation, as your duty to this house."

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