Page 70 of Wolf's Reckoning
“You walked the mourning path,” they said softly. “Now the Hollow must mark the passing.”
I gave a sharp nod. “I’m ready.”
They lifted a hand, pulling ash from a pouch and smearing it across my brow, then touching my sternum. “Blood to mourn. Ash to lead.”
The words echoed through the gathered pack. They bowed their heads in unison, not to me, but to the rite. To the old ways.
I turned to step back, but someone else stepped forward. A slender form. Familiar.Henry.
He looked nervous, big brown eyes too wide for a face still shedding childhood. But as he looked at me now, with his chin lifted, I paused. “Alpha Malric said you’d protect us.”
My throat tightened. “He said that?”
He nodded. “Alpha Malric told me that once. That if anything ever happened to him…we’d still be safe. Because you’d be here. And you never lie, Rowen. So we believe you.”
That affected me more than the stone on the ridge. Not because it hurt. Because ithealed. I reached out to him, brushing a leaf off his sleeve. “You believe in me, Henry?”
He nodded again. “We all do. Even the ones pretending they aren’t watching right now.”
I almost laughed. Almost cried. Instead, I stood and faced the pack. “Let them watch,” I whispered to him and saw his smile. “I will not fail you.”
Then I turned and walked back toward the pack hall—not as a grieving daughter.
But as the storm my father raised.
I didn’t expect him to be waiting. But there he was. Wolfe stood just beyond the threshold of the hall, arms crossed, posture easy—but I knew better. He was watching everything.Everyone. And right now, me most of all.
His eyes flicked to the ash across my brow. The smear over my heart. The mark at my neck from last night’s rite. His expression didn’t change, but something in him shifted. I felt it like a tremor in my ribs.
“You took the long way back,” he said quietly.
I stopped a few paces from him. “It felt like the right thing to do.”
He nodded as he watched the pack gather. “It is a sad day for us all.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “I meant what I said, two packs, Iwillserve them both.”
“I believe you,” I murmured. “You are allowing us to follow the old traditions. I…” I exhaled. “I know that your other pack is more…modern.”
Wolfe huffed out a laugh. “I follow tradition when tradition calls for it.” He looked around. “This is the only way to do the walk of mourning.”
“You did this for the alpha of Stonefang?” I asked, almost surprised that he would.
Wolfe looked at me, his gaze unreadable. “Alpha Lars was an alpha worthy of the same respect shown here to your father.”
“I…” I gave him an apologetic grimace. “I didn’t mean to imply he wasn’t…sorry.”
Wolfe squinted at me. “An apology? From the great daughter of the Hollow?” He smirked, but it was almost playful. “I know today is an exception; I won’t tell anyone.”
I punched his shoulder.
“And she’s back in the room,” he murmured with a small grin.
Asshole.But Ifelt better—double asshole.
Before either of us could speak again, the druid appeared behind me, stepping from the shadows like they’d always been there.
“It’s time,” they said. “The Hollow must see it sealed.”
Wolfe’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. Curiously, I followed the druid without a word, Wolfe a silent presence beside me. Neither told me to leave.
