The new packhouse smelled of fresh pine and smoke. Not the smoke of fire, but of new hearths being lit. It should have felt like hope. Instead, every breath I took felt like I was being weighed, measured, and found wanting.
I stood at the edge of the council room, my palms damp against the cold oak table. Twenty-one days ago, this room didn’t exist. Twenty-one days ago, most of the people sitting here thought I should be dragged out with the rogues and left for the wolves.
The room was tense. Twelve elders and warriors sat around the table, faces hard. Only the younger wolves looked at me without open hostility. They remembered me dragging three of them out of the collapsed tunnels in Chapter 20. The elders remembered the blood on my hands and nothing else.
“Silence,” the Alpha said.
H
