LOGINChapter 83 — Ofiura's POV"No, no, no. You have to guess with the *string.*""I don't want to guess with the string.""It's a *game,* Mom." Tessa held up a spool of pink ribbon in one fist like a sacred relic. "You unroll as much as you think goes around her belly. Closest one wins a prize.""What's the prize?""Honor.""I'd prefer a biscuit.""There are *two* prizes. Honor and a biscuit." Tessa flung out the ribbon with a flourish, and it unspooled across my mother's living room carpet in a long, fluttering pink streak. "Margaret. You're up."Mrs. Alder, in the best armchair with Pudding in her lap and a paper crown on her white hair that Tessa had made her wear, took the end of the ribbon in a wrinkled hand and considered me with narrowed, professional eyes."Stand up, dear. Turn to the side.""I feel like a melon at a market.""You look like a very *distinguished* melon." She measured, and snipped, and held up a length of ribbon with great confidence. "Thirty-one inches.""That's f
Chapter 82 — Ofiura's POV"This tribunal finds," said the Arbiter, "that the declaration of formal protection was filed over the explicit and repeated refusal of the protected party."A sound went through the chamber, a long, low, collective breath, like wind through dry grass. I did not move. I sat with my hands locked so tightly in my lap that my fingers had gone numb, and I looked at the carved wolf above the old man's head and listened to every word as though it were being written on my bones."It further finds," he continued, in the same dry, even voice, "that the danger invoked as justification was not, in the sense the Charter intends, immediate. A hearing set nine days hence is a process. It is not an emergency."Beside me, Judith did not so much as twitch. But I felt her go very still, the careful, held stillness of a woman who has waited thirty years for a sentence and is afraid to breathe on it."However."The word dropped like a stone."The tribunal is mindful that the hei
Chapter 81 — Ofiura's POV"All rise for the Tribunal of the Alpha Council."The words rang through the stone chamber like a bell struck underwater, and two hundred people stood at once in a rustle of wool and silk. I stood with them, my hand gripping the edge of the long oak table, my grandmother's silver comb pressed cold against my scalp. Beside me, Judith Marlowe rose with the easy, loose-limbed calm of a woman who had stood in rooms like this for thirty-seven years and had never once been impressed by them."Breathe," she murmured, without moving her lips."I am.""You're doing it very quietly. Do it a little more convincingly."I almost laughed. It was a small, helpful, unexpected thing, and I held onto it as the tribunal filed in, three figures in long gray robes, taking their seats on the high bench beneath a vast carved wolf. The Arbiter in the center was an old man with a face like a folded letter. He lowered himself into his chair, adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the c
"State your full name for the record, please.""Ofiura Voss.""Louder.""*Ofiura Voss.*""No, no, no." Judith Marlowe lifted her glasses to her forehead with a weary hand. "You sound like a woman apologizing for a parking ticket. This is a *tribunal,* Miss Voss. Say it like you own the room.""I don't own the room.""Then say it like you're *renting* it at a very good price and intend to stay."Tessa, perched on a kitchen chair at the far end of my mother's table with a ladle in one hand as a gavel and a dish towel draped over her shoulders as judicial robes, made a noise like a cat being stepped on."That," she said, "was *brilliant.*""Thank you, Your Honor.""I'm not Your Honor. I'm Alpha Thornwood." She lowered her voice to a lofty rumble. "*Miss Voss. Is it not true that you have no pack, no seat, and no standing whatsoever?*""It is not true.""*Is it not true that you are an unmarried woman of dubious reputation?*""That's a leading question," I said."*Objection!*" Mrs. Alder,
Chapter 79 — Damon's POV "Gold," I said happily. "Look at that. It's actually gold." The envelope lay in the center of the breakfast table on its own silver tray, cream and heavy, its flap stamped with a small, glittering foil seal that caught the morning light like a coin at the bottom of a fountain. Corinne had carried it in with both hands, as though it might go off. I had been waiting for it for three days, and I had told no fewer than eleven people, including the florist, the ice sculptor, and a deeply bored man at the Granville Club, precisely when it would arrive. "I'd thought you wanted it framed," said Patricia, from across the table. "I do. First I want to *read* it." I rubbed my hands. "Properly. Aloud. With ceremony." "To whom?" "To the three of you." I looked around the room. My mother sat at the head of the table in her morning gray, with her tea untouched and her spine like a ruler. Patricia sat opposite, with the baby in a high chair beside her, gumming a rusk. Co
Chapter 78 — Damon's POV"A certificate," I said. "On parchment. With a gold seal."The laboratory technician looked at me over the rim of her spectacles with the expression of a woman who had been asked many unreasonable things in her career and was cataloguing mine among the more colorful. She was small and brisk and utterly unimpressed by the Blackthorn name, which I found, frankly, a little insulting."We provide a standard report, Mr. Blackthorn.""I don't want a standard report.""It's a printed document with a reference number and a signature.""It's a *page.*" I leaned across the counter. "I'm not buying a page. I'm commissioning a legal declaration of paternity, to be signed and witnessed, to be framed. It will be displayed at a formal ceremony before every Alpha in the district. I'd expect it to look, I don't know, *dignified.*""We can offer a notarized copy.""With a gold seal.""We have an embosser.""Is it gold?"She sighed, very slightly, and reached beneath the counte







