We rode into Blackmoon at dusk on the night before the full moon, and the whole pack came out to watch.
I had imagined this moment a hundred times in nine days. I had imagined riding in broken, or angry, or trembling. I had not imagined how quiet it would be. The wolves lined the road from the boundary stones to the pack hall, hundreds of them, the same hundreds who had stood in the ritual clearing and watched their Alpha throw me down. They did not make a sound. They just watched, and I felt every one of their eyes, and I did not look away from a single one.
I was not the girl who had walked out of here.
That girl had left in dark hunting clothes, alone, at dawn, with nothing. I came back in deep grey silk the color of Ashenveil's banners, on a black horse, with the Lycan King riding a
