Ottilie's arms came round me and I stopped holding myself up.
Over her shoulder the pull was still there, cold and warm at once, patient as a tide.
Ottilie: Breathe, Els. Just breathe. I've got you.
I turned to look.
Past the lanterns there was only dark, and rain-smell, and the harbor going slap-slap on the stones.
Esk: Els. What is it?
Elspeth: Nothing. Someone walked over my grave.
Then the scent came across the stones and hit me square in the chest.
Cold iron. River water. Smoke off a fire that had burned a long time.
My wolf turned so hard inside me that I put a hand out to steady myself. She wanted to go to it.
Somebody tall with wide shoulders and a long dark coat was standing out past the lanterns, and I couldn't see his face at all.
A man moved across in front of me, and by the time I looked back that spot was empty again.
Duff: Fuck me. Look at her. Beta says no and she's already sniffing the dark for a new one.
Duff: Shameless, Bray. You'd take any wolf's mark tonight, wouldn't you.
Duff: All that grease on your hands and you're still begging for it.
My whole neck went hot and my cheeks burned, and the mark on my wrist jumped like it had been struck.
Esk: Say one more word to her, Duff.
He didn't shout it. That was worse. Duff looked at his face and shut his mouth.
Duff: Truth stings, that's all.
My mother's hand closed on my arm, the way she held a ledger. Firm and certain.
Morag: Chin up, Elspeth Bray. You will walk out of this square on your own two feet.
Morag: You've given these people enough of tonight.
So I walked. Esk on one side, Ottilie on the other, my mam behind us like a locked door.
Three people walked me home like I was worth guarding, and I could hardly stand to be looked at.
I held my chin up and I did not look at one single face.
The quiet voice came back with plenty to say.
It said sixteen-year-old me had carried a torch for Wade Corley for years, and tonight she'd carried it in front of the pack and got it spat on.
It said a man laughed at me, and now the whole pack knew my name for the wrong thing.
Ottilie: Listen to me. You're the woman who told the beta of this pack no in front of everybody.
Ottilie: That's the story that gets told. Not his.
I wanted to believe her. My chest still couldn't get a full breath in.
Esk: He won't come near you again. I'll see to that.
Elspeth: Don't get yourself thrown out over me, Esk.
Esk: For you I'd burn the yard down and be glad of the work.
We came up the lane to our own door, and I stopped dead on the step.
That scent again, laid across the doorstep like somebody had put a hand there.
Ottilie: Els. Don't touch that.
Elspeth: My hands know a bell when they see one.
There was a bell cut into the face of it. Carved deep, not painted. My bell, or near enough.
I picked it up. It was warm, and not from my hand.
My wolf went down on her belly in my chest and bared her throat. She'd never done that for anybody.
I felt wanted, and I didn't have a single word for how much that scared me.
Esk: Put it down.
Elspeth: It's a stone, Esk.
Esk: Stones don't walk up to a door and set themselves down, Els. Somebody stood right here doing it.
My wrist had gone quiet under the mark for the first time all night.
I stood on my own step with a black stone in my hand and my whole body leaning toward a stranger.
Morag: Inside. All of you. Bring that in and put it where I can see it.
I brought it in. My fingers didn't want to let it go.
Under the kitchen lamp the mark was plain. A bell, old-fashioned, with a clapper in it.
Ottilie: It's a pretty thing. That's what scares me.
He had been in that square tonight. He'd smelled me the way I'd smelled him.
And then he'd come to my door in the dark and left me a piece of himself on the step.
My wolf said one quiet word in my chest, like a promise. Mine.