In Heat for My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Cut Cable

In front of the pack Liesel shows them the sabotaged generator, until Wendell finds her own engraved cutters in her bag.

Two of the Alpha's guards took my arms before I could open my mouth.

One of them pried the knife out of my fingers.

He held it up to the light so everyone could see the blood on it.

"I found it in his room," I said. "The man who stabbed him dropped it."

"What man?" somebody shouted.

"She was leaving tonight," somebody else said. "Everybody knows."

By one in the morning they had me standing in the middle of the great hall in my bloody dress.

Nobody had given me a towel.

Nobody had given me my shoes.

Ozias sat in the big oak chair on the stage, the one he only used for judgments.

The doctor had been with Judd for an hour.

Every few minutes my stepfather's eyes went to the back stair.

"Tell it," he said.

So I told it.

I told it straight, up to the shape at the foot of his bed.

I left out the kiss.

I left out his hand in my hair.

That was the only lie I told all night.

"You went into my son's room during his rut," Ozias said. "Alone. In the dark."

"Somebody had to lock him in, and Ket wasn't there."

"And a man walked in with a knife, and he didn't see you."

"He didn't smell me," I said. "Nobody in this room ever has."

A few wolves laughed.

It wasn't a nice sound.

Ozias turned his head. "Regina."

My mother stood up slowly beside him.

She was still in her party silk and pearls.

She didn't look at me.

"Did your daughter have a reason to hurt the heir?" he asked her.

I waited for her to say no.

I'd been waiting for things from my mother for twelve years.

"She was leaving," my mother said. "She was angry. I told her tonight she had to go."

The hall went quiet.

"Mom."

"I'm sorry, Liesel." She sat back down and folded her hands. "I won't lie for you."

Something in my chest went very still.

Then the back stair creaked.

Judd came down it with Ket holding his chain.

He was bare to the waist, wrapped in white gauze from his collarbone to his ribs, and the gauze was already blooming red.

His eyes were still gold.

Every wolf in the hall stepped back from him.

"She saved me," he said. His voice was rough and too loud. "She hit him with a lamp. She held my chest shut with her own hands."

Ozias stood up. "Son. You're in a rut."

"I know what I'm in."

"You were chained to a wall with your blood up and no light in the room." His father's voice was gentle, and that was worse. "A man in a rut knows nothing. You can't even see straight."

"I know her hands," Judd said.

The whole hall turned to look at me.

I kept my face very still.

"Get him back upstairs," Ozias said to Ket.

"Dad."

"Now."

Ket tugged the chain, and Judd's jaw locked, and he went.

He looked back at me from the top of the stair.

I made myself look away first.

"I want to show you something," I said to the stage. "All of you. It'll take two minutes."

"You don't give orders here," one of the elders said.

"Then don't come," I said. "But you'll want to see it."

Ozias studied me for a long time.

Then he came down off the stage.

Half the pack followed us out the back door into the cold.

I walked barefoot across the frozen grass to the generator shed.

Somebody had brought a lantern.

I took it and held it low over the feed cable.

"There," I said.

The two ends lay a foot apart on the dirt.

Clean, bright copper, cut straight through.

"The generator ran the whole time," I said. "It just couldn't feed the house. Somebody cut this so the dark would last."

A murmur went through the wolves behind me.

Ozias crouched and looked at the copper.

He didn't touch it.

I pulled my phone out of the pocket in my dress and took three photos of the ends, close, with the flash.

"What are you doing?" one of the guards said.

"Keeping a record."

"Of your own work?"

"I was in the corridor when the lights went," I said. "Ask anyone who saw me go by."

Nobody said anything.

Nobody had seen me.

Nobody ever saw me.

Ozias straightened up.

"Someone cut it," he said slowly. "I'll grant that. Now tell me who in this pack knows that generator better than you."

My mouth went dry.

"Nobody," I said. "That's why I'm showing you."

"Uncle Ozias."

Wendell was coming across the grass from the house.

He had a hand on the back of his neck.

He was carrying my duffel bag.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You asked us to check her room. It was in the closet, all packed."

He set the bag down on the frozen grass and unzipped it.

My cable cutters were lying right on top, where I'd left them.

He held them up by the handle, careful, with the cuff of his sweater.

The red grips with L.O. engraved on them.

In the lantern light, the steel jaws were bright with fresh copper.

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