Page 33 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

A wolf on the near log stands up to see it. Two more stand up behind him. Dane has his arms crossed. He’s looking at the two halves.

“It’s one stone,” she says. She holds the halves up where everyone can see them. “There’s more of it missing than this. Two realms so far. Somebody cut the same layer out of both of them on purpose.”

I watch her hands. Then I make myself look at the stones instead. Across the fire Kari closes her right hand, opens it again and puts it face down on her knee. Rafe is looking at Dane and doesn’t see her do it. I see. It’s not my business. Nyxiana crosses the fire to Kari and turns her right hand over. She holds it and looks at her palm for a long time.

“Doria,” she says. “It moved when the stone came home. It’s reading Doria.”

“Then Doria’s next.” Dane doesn’t sit down. He starts handing out the work instead, Nova on supply, Ansel on moving the perimeter rotation up a day. Then he looks over at me.

“We keep turning up places Faelan worked that we never knew about,” he says. “Three more this week. All of them old. He was in this territory a lot longer than we thought he was. I want your read on the approach before you two go.”

“You’ll have it tonight,” I say.

Dane sits down. The talk comes back up around the fire. Somebody laughs on the far side. A woman slides down the log to make room for her mate who puts his boots up on the stones. Wyatt comes around with what’s left in the pot. Plates go up to meet him the whole way around. Rafe crosses to my end of the fire with two plates and sets one down on the log beside me.

“You haven’t eaten,” he says.

“No.”

He sits down with the other plate on his knee and starts in on it. He doesn’t ask me anything for a while. Then, “How far north were you?”

“Past the main range.”

“That’s not my end of it.” He works at his food. “Mine’s the main range. There’s nothing up there to go back to now.”

I don’t say anything.

“Yours is still standing, though.”

“It is,” I say.

“Then you’ve got more than I do.” He tips his fork at the fire. “I quit trying to get mine back a couple of months ago. This is the one that counts.”

I pick up the plate. “It does,” I say. He lets that go, doesn’t ask me anything else about it.

“Eat that before it’s cold,” he says before getting up, his hand on my shoulder on the way past. He goes back to Kari. She moves over on the log to give him room, says something to him, laughs at it. She leans into his side, he puts an arm around her leaves it there. I eat what’s on the plate because Rafe brought it. I set it down on the log beside me, put my hand on the edge of the wood and hold on.

Normally I can stop thinking about a thing when I want to. Not tonight. On that rock she came up onto her toes and stopped an inch off my mouth. Then put a step of rock between us and told me it wasn’t me. I’ve been handed that answer my entire life and it’s never kept me awake. I know she’s looking at me before I look up - she’s on the far side of the fire with Lyanna. When I look up she doesn’t take her eyes off me. Her hair is down, the firelight turning it orange down the side she has toward it, the same light is in her eyes, violet caught up in the silver. I don’t look away, neither does she. Nobody at this fire knows what that crossing did to me except her. She hasn’t said a word about it to anyone. She won’t.

Twenty people between us. Six steps around the near side of the fire. I counted them an hour ago. I don’t take them. Staying on this log is harder than the causeway was. She looks back at Lyanna, I put my eyes on the fire. The treeline is right behind me, I stand up and turn toward the dark.

“Valen.” It’s Nova, from the other side of the fire. She hasn’t stood up.

“You’re taking her into his country,” she says.

“Yes.”

“So, tell me what he does about it.”

“Nothing, at first,” I say. “He’s been ahead of us in every realm we’ve been to. He’s watching us, waiting. He stays out of our way until he knows what we’ve got.”

“That’s what I thought.” She points her fork at my log. “Sit down. What else?”

I look at the dark once then sit back down. “When he does move, it won’t be inside a court,” I say. “Too many people watching in a room like that. He’ll wait until we’re between places.”

“Then don’t be between places,” she says.

“That’s the plan.”