Chapter 17: The Gate

"Hold the stairs," my father said to Dunstan. "Nobody comes down."

Dunstan went up, two steps at a time, with his face blank.

My mother snatched up the silver knife and thrust it back into my father's hand.

"Again," she said. "Start again, now, before it settles."

"The line is broken."

"Then draw it again, or I will."

Overhead, the whole house shook, and a man screamed, and something heavy hit the hall floor and slid.

Bea had curled around her chained wrist on the stone, shaking.

I was on my knees with my left arm held out in front of me, because the iron had gone white-hot.

My wolf stood up inside me and did not sit back down.

"I hear him," my wolf said.

"Who?"

"Ours."

Then the cellar door burst inward.

It did not open.

It came off its hinges and fell down the stairs in two pieces, and Dunstan came with it, backward, with a bloody lip.

Ivo came down after him.

He was not wearing a jacket, and he was not wearing the face he used at school.

The horn had risen all the way, black and smooth and curved back over his left ear.

His eyes were gold from rim to rim.

There was blood on his hands that wasn't his.

He saw me, and for a single instant everything in him went still.

"Cassandra."

"Ivo!"

Dunstan got up off the cellar floor and put himself between us.

"That's far enough," he said.

"Move."

"She's my sister. This is a family matter, and you're not family."

"I'm her mate," Ivo said. "Move."

My brother threw the first punch.

It was a good one, short and hard, with all his weight behind it.

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