Chapter 5: Launch Night

By night the launch field was full of lights and people.

The Silverfang pack stood behind a velvet rope, and the elders sat in a row of chairs at the front.

Cameras lined the fence, and a banner over the stage read AIRBORNE WING in silver.

I stood at the back, beside Mathis Draycott.

I had not asked him to come. He had walked up and stood there, and I had let him.

"Your father's design," he said, low, looking at the glider.

"You know it?"

"My father's pack shot at it for two years." His mouth twitched. "It never once let us hit it."

I looked at him.

He did not explain, and the lights went up.

Corbin took the stage in his pale suit and made a short, warm speech about courage and the future of the pack.

He did not say my father's name.

Then Verena climbed into the cockpit in her white flight jacket, with my mother's ruby gone from her throat, and the crowd cheered.

They towed the glider to the top of the launch ramp.

I knew the ramp. Drivers on the tow line would pull the glider into the wind and release it at speed.

Verena raised her hand to the crowd.

The tow line snapped taut, and the glider rolled.

It lifted cleanly and climbed over the field to the cheers of the pack.

Then the nose rose too high.

I saw it before the crowd did.

The wings shuddered, and the glider hung there against the dark.

Then it dropped.

A scream went up from the rope.

"She's stalling," I said.

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