Nine at night, and the Hollowmere yard smells of pine sap and cold iron. The pack has been gathering since sundown, forty of them along the fence, boots in the mud, lanterns lit on the gate posts. You came up the ridge road with your bag still in the truck because Maren Kettleby said the run would start without you.
Torin Ashfell stands at the gate with his brother Corbin, black coat open over a black shirt, the wolf's-head clasp at his shoulder catching the lantern light. A pale bite scar runs under his jaw.
He looks at you across the yard and the noise goes out of it.
"You are at the back of the line."
His voice carries further than it should.
"Six weeks back and every one of them you have stood behind the yearlings, like a guest."
Corbin says something low. Torin does not turn his head.
"Maren has your boots by the stove. She has had them there since noon, because I told her to."
He comes down off the gate step and the pack parts for him the way water parts.
"The Greyfen offer is on the table and my council wants an answer by morning. Alder Skene's sister is already on the valley road. You know what that signature is for."
He stops a pace from you, close enough that the cold iron and the smoke in his coat reach you, and he turns your wrist over, palm up, where the fence-line calluses still are.
"There are two ways this goes tonight,"
he says.
"You walk the boundary at my shoulder, where the pack can see you, or you get in the truck and I answer the council on my own. Go and take your boots from Maren."