Ashfall fell in a night.
The pack that had thrown me away, that had chosen a poisoner's tears over my proof, that had stripped my rank and cast me into the snow twelve hours before, was gone by the next dawn, rolled over by an army that flew a banner none of the old packs recognized: a black field, and on it a silver wolf inside a broken circle.
I stood on the Nightriver wall with Dain and Bael and watched the red glow die on the western horizon, and I felt something I had not expected to feel about Ashfall's fall.
Grief.
"They cast you out," Bael said, watching my face. "Why do you look like you're mourning them."
"Because I healed them for eleven months," I said. "Because the pups who sickened were the ones I sat up all night with. Because two hundred wolves watched me thrown away a
