For a long moment nobody breathed.
Then Kael Draven came down the steps of the dais, and the bowl of stone seemed to lean in around him.
He did not hurry. Firelight caught the black cloak, the blood drying on his forearms, the hard lines of a face that looked carved rather than born. He stopped ten paces from her, and even across the heat of the bonfires she caught cedar smoke and rain on warm stone.
“Rise,” he told his pack, and they rose, a thousand bodies unfolding as one. Only Ariana stayed where she was, because her legs had stopped listening to her. A hand closed under her elbow, steadying her, and she knew without looking that it was the Beta’s.
An old man shuffled out of the front rank, stooped and white haired, leaning on a staff of pale wood. “Elder Varek asks that the First
