Chapter 6: Teeth

I found them at the fire pit in the yard, still laughing about it.

Rune's beta sat on a log with his boots stretched toward the flames and a beer in his hand.

His knuckles were split.

Three young wolves from the shore lounged around him, Freya's friends, the ones who'd giggled at the feast.

A dozen Kingsfall warriors were coming off the night watch across the gravel. They slowed down when they saw my face.

"Stand up," I said.

The beta looked at me over his beer.

He was a big man, thirty-five, a head taller than me.

I'd stitched his arm after a border fight two winters ago.

He'd brought me a pie to say thanks.

"Go to bed, Kari," he said. "You're not anybody's Luna."

"No. I'm his sister." I pointed at Espen, who'd followed me down with a rag pressed to his face. "Stand up."

"Or what?"

I kicked the beer out of his hand.

The bottle smashed on the fire-ring stones, and he was up off that log, fast, with his lip pulled back off his teeth.

He swung.

I'd taught half of Greyfir's young wolves to fight in the clearing behind the lodge.

I had taught this man's nephew.

I knew how Greyfir swung, and I was already under it.

I hit him twice in the ribs, hard, the same spot.

He folded around it.

I hooked his ankle and put him on his back in the gravel.

Before he could roll, I had my knee on his chest and my hand on his windpipe.

The Kingsfall warriors had stopped walking.

One of the shore boys took a step toward me. Espen stepped in front of him and smiled through his split lip.

The boy stepped back.

"Four on one," I said into the beta's face. "In the dark. On a twenty-year-old with a torn link three days old."

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