Chapter 4. The Name I Wrote

Ronan's POV

They carried Tobin through the gate of the Thornfall outpost a little after two in the morning.

I was waiting in the yard. I'd felt him go through the pack bond an hour earlier, a small, bright thread snapping somewhere down in the Reach, and I'd stood here ever since with my hands locked behind my back so nobody would see them shake.

I'm twenty-two years old. I'd taught him to track. I'd told his mother he'd be safe on border watch.

They laid him on the stones. I knelt and pulled back the coat.

Ribs to hip. Same as the others. Clean, deep, fast.

Fourteen, Thane said inside me, like grinding stone. Fourteen of ours this year.

I covered Tobin's face and stood up.

"Where is she?"

"Holding cell," Garrick said. My Beta had a face built for scowling, but tonight his eyes were red at the rims. "No scent at all, Ronan. Same as the ghosts. Kneeling over him with his blood up to her elbows."

A growl rose from the crowd. Tobin's brother, Ewan, pushed through the warriors with his teeth bared and his eyes already gold.

"Give her to me."

"No."

"She killed my brother!"

"Maybe." I didn't raise my voice. "And if she did, I want to know who she runs with, where they sleep, and how they hide their scent. Dead, she tells me nothing."

"Alpha—"

I looked at him.

I just looked at him until the gold faded out of his eyes and his shoulders came down an inch.

"Go sit with your brother, Ewan," I said quietly. "He shouldn't be alone right now. Neither should you."

* * *

The holding cell smelled of old iron and older fear.

She sat against the back wall in Brenna's spare coat, with a silver chain around both wrists. Too thin. A yellowing bruise on one cheekbone.

She lifted her head and looked straight at my face.

She looked at me like she was memorizing me.

"He said something before he died," she said, before I could speak. Her voice was hoarse but steady. "Peak Four. He said, tell him Peak Four. Tell him they're back."

Peak Four. Tobin's call sign.

"That's on his radio," I said. "Every time he checks in. Anyone standing over him when he called it in would have heard it."

"I wasn't standing over him. I found him."

"Convenient."

"No," she said. "It wasn't."

I crouched in front of her, out of reach.

"You have no scent," I said. "Not a trace. In thirteen killings, the only wolves I've ever failed to track are the ones who did this. And tonight my warriors find you, with no scent, kneeling over the fourteenth."

"I know how it looks."

"Then explain it."

"I can't," she said finally. "I don't know why I don't have a scent. I've never had one. Not since I was ten."

"Where are you from?"

"Ashgrove," she said. "My name is June Rowe."

I don't think I breathed.

June Rowe.

I'd carried that name for eleven years. Not in my mouth. Under it. Like a stone you swallow and learn to walk around.

I was twenty years old the last time I saw her. Up to my chest in the black water of the Halden, with a small, limp body in my arms, telling her not to look back. I'd carried her to the bank and laid her on the gravel next to what was left of her parents, and she'd been so light. So light I'd thought she was already dead.

A quarter of an hour later, Bram Calloway had come splashing down the ford from upstream with his trackers, wet to the knees, shouting her parents' names.

Then I stood before the Allied Council and told them what my nose had told me. The child was alone. No other scent.

And here she was. Grown. Starved. Bruised. In my cell, with my scout's blood on her hands.

And still no scent.

So I was right, something in me said. Something cold and eager. Eleven years ago, I was right. Whatever she is, she was it then too.

And underneath that, something worse. Something I'd been holding down since I was twenty.

Or you were wrong. And everything that's been done to her since was done on your word.

I looked at the old white scars on her knuckles, the kind you get from lye and scrubbing brushes.

I couldn't afford the second thought. Not tonight. Not with Tobin cooling on the stones outside.

So I stood up.

Something stirred at the edge of my senses as I did. Like the first breath of rain on warm stone, there and gone so fast I couldn't name it.

Thane paced under my skin, restless, silent. That was strange. Thane always had a word.

"Take the silver off her," I said to Garrick. "She stays in the cell. Two on the door. Nobody touches her."

I walked out before she could look at me again.

* * *

I went to the records room at the back of the outpost and found the box marked with the year I turned twenty.

Sworn testimony of Ronan Holt, heir of Thornfall.

The child was found alone on the riverbank. She was covered in her parents' blood. I detected no other scent in the area.

My handwriting. My signature.

I'd been late that night. Twenty minutes late, because I'd stopped to argue with my escort about the road. If I'd come on time, I'd have seen whatever happened on that bank. Instead I'd come in time to pull a child out of the water and then hand her to the people who'd make her pay for it.

I'd told myself ever since that I'd only written the truth.

I sat there with the page in my hands and thought about the scars on her knuckles.

Garrick knocked and came in with a folded letter. The wax seal was dark green and still soft.

"Truck from Ashgrove," he said. "Came straight across the ford. The driver's waiting at the gate for an answer."

I broke the seal.

To the Alpha of Thornfall.

An omega of my pack, June Rowe, has fled into the Reach. She is the girl this Council convicted eleven years ago for the deaths of her parents. Tonight she attacked my son with a poisoned blade. His wound will not close.

Under Council law, I demand her return. Any pack that shelters her shares her guilt.

Bram Calloway, Alpha of Ashgrove.

A convicted killer. A poisoned blade. A wound that won't close. No scent. Kneeling over my dead scout.

Every piece fits. Every piece of it was exactly what I wanted to believe.

I folded the letter and set it on top of my old testimony.

"Tell the driver he'll have his answer at dawn," I said.

Garrick waited. "And the answer is?"

I looked at the two papers on the table. My words, eleven years old. Bram's words, still wet.

"At dawn," I said, "she goes back across the river."