RILEY
Knox shifted back first.
He stood in the Nevada scrub in the autumn morning light and looked at the Elder Council — twelve of them, still in their regalia, Elder Reth at the center — and then he looked at me. I'd shifted back too, the shift in reverse feeling like the most natural thing I'd ever done, like pulling a deep breath after a long time without enough air.
He invoked the challenge.
I didn't fully understand the words — old pack formal language, the kind of thing that gets carved into ceremonial objects — but I understood what it was from the way the elders' faces moved. Something they hadn't expected. Something they'd expected never to hear. Reth's composure shifted by exactly one millimeter, which in a man of his control was the equivalent of someone else dropping every
