Semua Bab The Wolf She Silenced: Bab 41 - Bab 50

The warden's name was Nadia, and she did not say much that night.She looked at me across the fallen cairn with her grey hair and her brown lined face and her hands folded in her lap, and she said, "You are the Luna who can smell a lie. I have been waiting for you since before your father was born.""Why did you not come to me?""Because the last pack I trusted took my wolf and my name." She looked at the fallen stone. "I have been a rogue for a hundred years. A rogue does not walk up to a pack house door."We talked until the moon went down. She told me about the founding ritual and the counter-ritual and the waiting wolf, and she told me what she needed from me when Fearchar came, and then she told me to go back to the pack house and sleep and come to her again at the next full moon.I came back up the ridge with Cemal and went to my room and did not sleep.Maren was at my door before dawn.She came in without knocking and shut the door behind her and stood with her back against it

I found Orhan in the elders' house that evening.He was in his chair by the fire with his stick across his knees and the founding book on the table beside him, and he did not look surprised when I came in. He had known I would come."You were there," I said. "You were at the cairn a hundred years ago and you stood at the back and watched your brother lay a false bond on the Luna Ayşe, and you did not stop him.""I did not stop him." His clouded eyes were on the fire. "I was nineteen years old and my brother was the cleverest wolf I had ever known and I thought he was doing what the pack needed. I was wrong. I have been wrong for a hundred years and I have not been able to say it out loud.""You said it to my father.""I said it to your father when he was young and reading the founding book and asking the same questions you are asking now. I told him the truth and I made him swear not to write it down." Orhan's mouth moved. "He wrote it down anyway. He wrote it down and then he put the

Maren would not tell me.She sat at the table with her hands on the wood and her grey eyes on my face, and she said, "I cannot," and then she said it again, and then she said, "Luna, I am asking you to trust me one more time. I have never asked you for that before. I am asking you now."I sat across from her with the smell of her fear in my nose and the whole pack waiting outside the door."You have one week," I said. "At the full moon we go to the warden and you will bring the thing in your basket and you will put it on the cairn in front of me. If you do not, I will take your keys myself."She nodded. She did not look relieved. She looked like a wolf who had been given a stay of execution and knew the rope was still there.I went out into the yard and the sun was going down and the pack was at the fires and I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.That was when I saw Cemal.He was crossing the yard toward the smokehouse with his coat open and his black hair loose, and

We put Barış in the root cellar under the kitchen.It had a door that barred from the outside and no window and a stone floor, and the warriors brought him down and set him on a stool in the dark with a lamp on the floor beside him.I went down alone.He was sitting with his bound arm in his lap and his singed hair sticking up and his face black with smoke, and he looked up when the door opened and did not look surprised."You came yourself," he said."I came myself because you are my Beta and I wanted to hear it from your mouth." I stood on the bottom step. "Why were you at the smokehouse tonight?"He looked at me for a long moment. "I told you. I came back to burn the preparations before the Council came.""You told me that in front of Cemal and the whole yard." I sat down on the step. "Now tell me the truth."Barış was quiet. The lamp on the floor threw his shadow up the wall."Erik sent me," he said."Say it plainly.""Erik sent me to the smokehouse to burn it. He said if the smok

We ran back up the path with the bell still ringing and the sky going grey and the ferns wet against my legs.The pack was in the yard by the time we came through the gate. Barış was out of the root cellar and standing between two warriors with his singed hair and his bound arm, and Orhan was on the steps with the founding book and Maren was at the kitchen door with her basket.And the whole pack was looking at me."Luna," Deniz said. She was standing at the front with her braid coming loose and her face white. "The north cairn. It has been marked."I went up the ridge with the warriors behind me and the whole pack following.The north cairn stood at the edge of the pines where it had always stood, and the stones were grey in the first light, and on the top stone, cut deep into the granite and painted with a dark resin that had dried in the night, was the running wolf of the Çamlıca Pack.I stood in front of it with my hands at my sides and my wolf awake behind her door."When was it