The pack council kept its seat in the old fire station on Marsh Street, a brick relic wedged between a pawn shop and a laundromat, and it was the last place in the city anyone would look for the most powerful wolf alive. That was the point. Adrian walked in the door at eight in the morning with his mother's letter over his heart, June on his arm, and me beside him, and thirty wolves stopped talking at once.
I could feel what they felt. That was new — the tide was rising toward dawn's edge, and the rope was wide open, and every wolf in the room was a faint pressure against my skin. Curiosity. Wariness. Under it, from the elders, something older and hungrier: recognition.
"Blackwood." The woman who rose from the long table was seventy if she was a day, silver-haired, with a cane she clearl
