"Good. Number four. What is the customary signal for a pack-wide hunt in your territory?"
"Three long howls from the alpha. Repeated at one-hour intervals until enough wolves answer."
"Number five"
"Oryn." I stopped walking. "Are you preparing for an invasion?"
He stopped too. He turned and looked at me with those silver eyes, and for the first time since I had met him, the brisk practical layer dropped away.
"Yes," he said. "We have been preparing for an invasion for five hundred years. We just did not know when."
He paused.
"And now we know," he said quietly, "that it is coming soon. Because of you."
The corridor felt very cold.
He started walking again.
I followed.
The war room had a round stone table in the centre and a fire in the wall and three Lycans standing around the t
