Silverblood Mate

Chapter Four: The Elders' Verdict

Aunt Odessa finds out in week three. Not because she's observant, she's never been observant about anything that doesn't touch her directly but because the wash girl has an arrangement with her I didn't know about.

I've been careful. Bryn's been more careful. It doesn't matter. At dinner on an ordinary evening, my aunt says my name in the voice that has meant trouble since I was small enough to flinch at it.

She doesn't shout. That's the thing about Odessa, she's most dangerous when she's quiet. She sits across the table with her hands folded and says, "You have shamed this house."

I say nothing.

"You have shamed this pack." Still nothing.

"I took you in when your parents died, when the Elders asked and I had no obligation, none, to say yes. I fed you. I housed you. I endured the whispers about what lives under my roof. And this is what you've done with it."

There are things I could say. I keep them behind my teeth, the way I've kept everything behind my teeth since I was nine years old and learned that reacting only ever costs more than staying still.

The Elder Council meets the next morning. My uncle stands before them and delivers his complaint with the gravity of a man who has been waiting years for this exact excuse. I watch him perform reluctance he doesn't feel. I've watched him practice that face my whole life.

The Elders deliberate for a while. I stand against the wall and think about Bryn's face at the creek, about the warmth of moonlight on my skin, about the fact that whatever else is true, I refuse to be only a curse.

The head Elder finally speaks, voice old and certain. "Wren Sorrel. You have shamed Hollow Pine. You are an unmated wolf carrying a child no one claims, already a burden this pack has stretched itself thin to bear, and you have proven beyond doubt that your presence here is one we are no longer willing to carry." He pauses to let the weight land. "You are cast out at dawn. You will be escorted to the border. You will take nothing beyond the clothes on your back. You will not return."

I breathe once. Then again.

I look at my uncle, satisfied and staring at the middle distance. I look at my aunt, staring at her folded hands. I look at the Elders in their carved chairs, old men who have never once questioned whether they were right about anything, deciding my life with the same certainty they've always used, having never once had a verdict handed down about their own.

"I understand," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expect. I think it comes from nineteen years of practice surviving mornings exactly like this one.

I turn and walk out before they can watch me do anything else.

Bryn is in the corridor. She's heard everything. Her jaw is set, her eyes wet, and she grabs my arm. "We go together. I'm leaving with you."

"No."

"Wren…"

"No. Your father is Beta. If you leave with me, it becomes political, and your whole life here becomes impossible. Stay. I'll find a way. I always do."

She doesn't let go for a long moment, caught between the part of her that wants to argue and the part that knows I'm right and hates it. Bryn is better than me at almost everything. She isn't better at this, at letting someone she loves do the hard thing alone.

At dawn, they walk me to the border. Wolves on either side, not touching, just making sure I go. Bryn's voice carries behind me the whole way, getting smaller with every step, and I don't let myself look back.

I hear it before I see it, something low and fast moving through the trees ahead.

I stop. My escorts stop too. One glances at the treeline. The other looks at me with the expression of a man deciding this is officially no longer his problem. They leave. Of course they leave. Their obligation ended the moment they delivered me to the line, and nothing in Hollow Pine's code says the curse-born gets any further consideration than that.

I don't blame them. I've spent nineteen years learning I'm not someone people stay for.

The sound in the trees gets closer.

I'm alone at a border at dawn, no pack, no wolf, no weapon, seventeen copper coins in my coat and nothing else, and something is coming for me out of the dark.

I think, this is the worst morning of my life.

Then I think, no. The worst morning was the one I don't even remember, the one that took my whole family before I could form a single word. I have survived worse than this already, even if I didn't know I was surviving it at the time.

I run.