Chapter 9: Silver

Bram shifted in the doorway.

I had seen it a hundred times, and I had never seen it that fast.

His shirt split down the back, and the tall brown-black wolf in front of me was already through the door and into the rain.

I heard the first one hit him before I heard him snarl.

I grabbed the iron poker from the stove and went to the window.

Greywater wolves were pouring out of the trees on every side of the yard, grey and tan and rust-red, wet to the skin.

Twenty of them, as Bram had said, and the nearest was already at the porch.

Burke's truck sat dark at the end of the track, with its door hanging open.

There was nobody in it.

Something heavy hit the back window of the cabin.

Glass burst across the kitchen floor.

A wolf came in over the sill, shoulders first, and landed in the room with its lip curled back over a mouthful of teeth.

It was a young one, rust-colored, with pale eyes.

Verity's eyes.

My wolf rose in me all at once.

I had never let her out on purpose, and she came hard and fast.

My hands hurt first, and then my back.

My nails split and lengthened into claws, and my teeth ached in my jaw.

I couldn't take the whole shift with the pups, but I felt as much of it as I could hold, and I held it all.

The rust-colored wolf sprang.

I stepped into it and drove my claws through its shoulder.

It screamed.

I felt bone, and I ripped my hand free, and the wolf went down on the kitchen tiles and didn't get up.

I stood there with blood to my wrist and my breath sawing in my chest.

I had never hurt anyone in my life.

I wasn't sorry.

"Linnea!"

Bram was in the doorway, back in his skin and bare to the waist, with a gash across his ribs that was already turning grey at the edges.