Chapter 17: The Gathering

The pack hall held three hundred wolves, and every one of them turned to look when I walked in beside the Alpha.

It was dusk on the last night of October.

The fire outside was laid and not yet lit, a pile of split birch the height of a house on the shore field.

Inside, the long tables had been pushed back, and the elders sat on a dais with their hands folded.

I wore my mustard cardigan and my good boots.

Lennart wore a clean black thermal, and his iron key, and he held my hand where all of them could see.

"Beside me," he had said at the door. "Not behind."

I stood beside him.

My heart beat.

Runa Aas rose from the front bench in her white coat, with her father at her shoulder, and smoothed her skirt with one gloved hand.

"Alpha," she said. "Before the fire, may I speak?"

"You may."

She turned and faced the room.

She did it well, with her head a little bowed and her voice soft and sorry.

"I did not want to say this. But the pack deserves the truth before it votes."

A hum went round the hall.

"The Alpha's pen pal, the woman who writes to him from the Moon's box, is not a mystery. She is standing beside him."

She held out one gloved hand, palm up, toward me.

"Maja Torvik. The clerk from Lund's."

Three hundred heads swung toward me.

I felt every one of them.

"She lied to an Alpha's face for a month," Runa said, "and you are all about to thank her for it."

The hall breathed in.

"She chose to deceive him. I thought you should know, before you let him hand her your trust."

She sat down.

It had taken her forty seconds, and every word of it was true.

I stood very still.

Lennart's hand tightened on mine.

"Is that all?" he said.

Runa blinked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Is that all you came to say?"

"It is the truth."

"It is," he said. "I knew."

The hall went so quiet I could hear the stove tick.

"I knew," Lennart said again, louder, and turned to face the room.

"I have known since last Friday, and I would have known sooner if I had not been a fool."

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