Chapter 7: Rogue Night

I took my hand off the stone, and the gold line shuddered and held.

I didn't hear what Fergus shouted after me.

I was already running down the slope with my coat coming off my shoulders.

I had not shifted in a year.

I had told myself that a Luna who kept the books and the wards had no need of fur.

My wolf came up under my skin.

It hurt, a long hot pull along every bone, and then the cold stung my nose, and the whole night was a hundred times louder.

I landed on four paws in the frost, small and silver-grey, with my tail down and my ears flat.

I smelled blood.

It was Linus, ahead in the gully, and he was alone and he was afraid.

I ran.

Five rogues were closing on him.

They were gaunt things in torn grey coats, with scars across their muzzles and eyes the color of old coins.

Two of them wore leather gauntlets on their forepaws with silver studs sewn through the knuckles.

My brother was a lanky sixteen-year-old in wolf shape, running flat out with his tongue lolling, and he had no chance.

I took the first rogue in the flank at a dead run.

I wasn't a fighter.

I was fast, though, and I hit it low, and it went down in a tangle with a yelp.

The second one turned on me.

I dodged its jaws by a hair and slid under its belly, and I felt claws rake my hip.

Then I was at Linus's shoulder, and I shoved him hard with my skull toward a hollow under an old uprooted pine.

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