Stella answered her mother in obedience, “They asked for my name, age, your name, your age, where our pack was, and they asked about my birth father.”

“And what did you tell them about your birth father?”

Stella took a moment, and swallowed a lump in her throat before she muttered, “What you told me to say, that he died before I was born and you’ve never told me anything about him.”

“Good girl. And did they believe you?”

“I don’t think so,” Stella murmured, her eyes choosing to look anywhere else but her mother.

Despite Margaret’s poker face, her eyes channeled only angered disappointment. “You could lie with a...