Chapter 26 — Blood in the Furrow
"Who's there?"
The humming stopped.
Kade rose in the dark of the chamber with the reliquary still open in his hands and forty-one stitches pulling like wire. Down the tunnel, forty feet away, the lamplight found the edge of a hood — a small figure, stooped, standing perfectly still.
"You're not supposed to be down here, Alpha," said a woman's voice.
Old. Not frightened. The dry, patient voice of somebody who has spent a lifetime telling larger people to be quiet.
"Whose hair is this?" Kade's own voice came out ragged. "Whose?"
"Put her down."
"Answer me."
"You've held it long enough to leave a smell on it," the old woman said, and for the first time something moved under the flatness — not fear. Grief, gone hard and strange. "That's five years of c
