Chapter four

CHAPTER FOUR

HAZEL'S POV

I reached for my seatbelt. Julian's hand landed on mine and held it still.

My heart jumped. But he wasn't looking at me. He was staring past me at Sienna, and his eyes had gone completely gold.

"Do you know what you just did?" he said, very low. "If I'd hit you at forty, not even you would have healed that."

He was frightened for her. I could hear it in his voice. I looked down at my lap and felt my face go hot.

Sienna laughed through her tears. "I knew it. You still care." She said it to him, but she was looking at me. "So why is she still sitting there?"

Julian took his hand away. "Go on in, Hazel."

I unbuckled and pushed the door open too fast. It nearly caught her hip.

"Watch it," she hissed. Then she leaned close enough that only I could hear. "Oh, right. You can't say sorry, can you? You can't say anything. The Wrens' last little runt, and she's a mute."

I bowed my head to her and walked toward the bakery without looking up.

Jenna came out of the door like a storm, still in her apron. I could see her eyes flashing Hale green and her nails starting to lengthen.

I threw my arms around her before she could reach the street. She tried to shake me off. Then she felt my tears on her neck, and she went still.

Behind me, through the bakery window, I heard Sienna laugh. Jenna's arm came around my shoulders, and she steered me inside.

"It's okay," she said quietly. "It's okay."

In the back kitchen, I washed my face and tied on my apron. Through the front window I watched Sienna scrub the passenger seat with a wet wipe. Then she sprayed it with something and fanned the air, the way you'd clear a smell you couldn't stand, before she sat down.

She turned and looked at me through the glass. You can't win, she mouthed.

I went back to work.

We had a seven-tier cake due that afternoon for Alpha Price's eightieth birthday. I loved making things like that. I could take flour and butter and sugar and herbs and turn them into something that made a wolf close her eyes and forget to be guarded for one bite.

My mother had been the Wren pack's healer. She grew every herb in the valley, and I used to sit in her garden and eat mint leaves off the stem. I didn't remember her face anymore, but I remembered her hands, and somehow my hands remembered what hers knew. Every cake I made had something growing in it.

Jenna was filming me while I piped. She ran an agency in the human city, and her phone never left her hand.

"What if I posted these?" she said. "People would go crazy. You could make real money, Hazel."

I looked up.

"You keep saying you want to buy back your family's things." Her voice softened. "The Wren silver went to auction in New York last spring. I saw the listing."

I put down the piping bag.

After the fire, the Council had sold everything the Wrens owned to pay the Accord debts. It was my mother's silver, my father's books, and Noah's carving knives. For years I'd watched the auctions and never had the money to bid.

"I'll ask Julian," I signed.

Jenna made a face. "You don't need his permission."

"I'm his Luna. I do."

"You're his Luna in name, and he treats you like a houseguest." She shook her head. "Do you know what my grandfather says? He says half the packs east of the river only kneel to Julian because you're sitting next to him. If he ever repudiated you, the Accord would break the same day. Julian's seat is standing on you, Hazel. And he acts like you're the lucky one."

I stared at her.

I didn't believe her. Julian was the strongest wolf in New England. I'd watched him put a challenger twice his age on the ground in under a minute when he was twenty-two. Nobody had put him anywhere.

But that night on the balcony, Julian had said not now. I couldn't stop wondering what he'd meant by that, and what he was waiting for.

I pushed the thought away and picked up the piping bag again. There was a cake to finish, and wondering never got anything finished.

It took me four hours to finish the cake. It was too tall for one person, so Jenna asked me to ride along and help her carry it.

I hesitated. I wasn't supposed to go into another pack's territory without Julian.

"Price land is Accord land," Jenna said. "Your family's friends. Get in the van."

I got in the van and buckled my seatbelt before I could change my mind.

The Price estate was out past Wellesley, an hour west through rolling woods. Halfway there, Jenna slowed down at a bend where a big stone marker stood at the edge of the road, half swallowed by ivy.

"Smell that?" she said, and then winced. "Sorry. Habit."

"What is it?"

"Boundary. Blackwood ends here, and Price begins." She rolled her window down and breathed in. "Every wolf in New England knows this marker. It used to be a Wren stone. Your father set it."

I looked back at it through the rear window as it disappeared around the bend. I could just make out a little bird carved into the top of it, worn almost smooth.

I'd been driven past that stone a hundred times in Julian's car. Nobody had ever told me.

When we pulled through the gates, there were wolves everywhere. Half of them were in human form in suits and dresses on the lawn, and a few in fur lay in the shade of the oak trees like enormous dogs. The air must have been thick with scent. To me it only smelled like cut grass and canapés.