"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Ford

Ezra's POV

The river was cold enough to stop a man's heart.

I went in anyway, in wolf shape, and the current took my legs and dragged.

Ahead of me a gold head cut the water, with a gleam of silver in its teeth.

Celia swam well.

She had been a champion at the school pool, I remembered, and she knew every bend of this bank.

She was fast.

I was bigger.

I put my head down and drove across.

Four of my wolves waited on the far shore where the ford ran shallow.

I had put them there at dawn, on a hunch, the moment Clover said the Seer's guard was down.

Celia saw them from the middle of the river.

She turned hard downstream.

My wolves did not chase.

They fanned out along the bank, patient, and walked her toward the shingle.

She came out of the water at the edge of the ford and ran straight into me.

I took her by the scruff and we went down together on the stones.

She was strong.

Her claws opened my forearm to the bone, and her teeth went for my throat.

I rolled her and pinned her beneath my weight.

She shifted under me.

I took my wolf back at the same moment, because I do not hold a woman down in fur.

She lay on the wet gravel in a torn gray coat, her braid undone, panting.

The flask had slid out of her mouth.

It lay a foot from her hand.

She lunged for it.

I got there first.

I closed my fingers around the silver, hot from her teeth, and the J on the cap bit into my palm.

It was a third full.

"Give it to me," she said.

"No."

"Give it to me!"

She was shaking.

It was not fear.

I have seen fear on wolves, and this was rage so total it had nowhere to go.

"You think you've won," she said. "You think she's won. You haven't seen her yet."

"Be still."

"Jasper will wake," Celia said. "If he wakes. He'll look at her, and he'll beg, and she'll forgive him, because that's what she is. I've watched her for eighteen years. She forgives everyone who hurts her. She forgave Dad for every word."

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