Chapter 8: The Border

I pulled the flannel back on and went out the front door with Caleb on one side and Hattie on the other.

My hair was a mess.

My mouth was swollen.

Every Westpoint wolf on that porch could smell what we had done, and not one of them said a word.

At the border cairn, where the ridge road crossed between the two packs' land, forty Lake Shore wolves stood in a half circle.

Nolan was at the front in his peacoat.

The Beta stood at his right and the red-bearded enforcer at his left, with a bandage on his throat.

A tall old elder from the funeral hall waited behind them, leaning on a cane.

"There she is!" Nolan called.

"Lilia! Are you hurt?"

"I walked here."

"She's under his influence," Nolan told the wolves behind him, loud and grieved.

"The Westpoint Alpha put his hands on her at the funeral."

"He's marked her with his scent."

"A woman does not run to the man who butchered her family unless something has been done to her."

A muttering went through his wolves.

Some of them looked uncertain.

Some of them looked at me with pity, which was worse.

"Nolan," I said.

"I ran here on my own two legs."

"Of course you believe that."

"I came to ask him a question."

"And what did he answer? A lie? He is a kinslayer. He murdered his own father the night of the raid."

Caleb said nothing beside me.

I could feel him holding perfectly still.

"And you," I said, "are the man who pulled the north patrol."

Nolan's face did not change.

The Beta's did.

It was only a flicker, a dip of the eyes, but I saw it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Fatal Attraction: The Hybrid Princess from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.