Chapter 5: Silver Smoke

The first smoke pot came through the window and burst on the kitchen floor.

Silver smoke burns a wolf's throat from the inside, and I felt it catch before I had finished my breath.

"Cellar!" I shouted. "Everyone down!"

The children were already tumbling off the loft ladder, all six, with the Healer behind them holding a wet shawl over her mouth.

I threw back the trapdoor in the floor and pushed them down one at a time.

Bram was last.

"Mama, I can fight," Bram said.

"You can hold your sister's hand and count to a thousand."

He went.

I dropped the trapdoor and dragged the table over it.

Then the front door came off its hinges.

Two of Perrin's trackers came through it, wearing silver mesh gloves and carrying a net weighted with iron.

Lucan hit the first one before the door had finished falling.

He did not shift. He drove his shoulder into the man's chest and put him through the wall.

The second tracker swung the net at my head.

I shifted in the middle of the step. My clothes tore, and my wolf was on four legs and in the air before the net came down.

I hit him at the knees.

He went over backward with a yell, and I bit down on the hand that held the net until the silver gloves split.

Outside, the Ashfall wolves had met the rest of them at the treeline.

I could hear snarling, and a man screaming, and Lucan's low voice calling orders.

"Eight of them!" Lucan shouted. "Keep them off the house!"

The smoke came thicker.

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