Chapter 12

What the accountants found was this. In 1847, the Silvercrest territory did not belong to the Blackwoods. It belonged to the Vales. My great-great-grandmother's line held that valley, and the Blackwoods took it the way old families always take things — a forged Council transfer, a disputed mating contract, and two hundred and six dead wolves in a single winter that the official histories describe as "a period of consolidation." The Vales who survived went west and became mountain wolves....