The Alpha Hunts the Exiles, So I Let Him Catch Me novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: June
"Ten," Unai said, at the edge of the high pasture, with his hand over his eyes. "Count them with me."
"Bat," I said, backing away through the gentians.
"Bi."
"Hiru."
I turned and ran.
It was the second week of June, and the whole valley had come up the mountain with the flocks.
Eleven houses and seven, eighteen bells and four thousand ewes, and the cheese huts opened at last on the long green shelf under the pass.
Nobody noticed one woman running barefoot across the top meadow with her boots in her hand.
The grass was knee-high and wet with the morning.
The sky was wide and blue, and I ran with my cropped hair blowing back.
My scar was warm in the sun, and my wolf ran with me under my skin.
I had been told for five years to hide.
I ran where anyone could see me, and I laughed all the way.
Behind me, far off, I heard him count.
"Lau. Bost. Sei."
I ran for the cairn at the top of the slope, a pile of grey stones the shepherds had built a hundred years ago.
I made it with my lungs burning.
"Zazpi. Zortzi. Bederatzi."
I put my back to the cairn and stood in plain view.
"Hamar!" Unai shouted, a long way below me.
I heard him come.
He ran steadily and exactly, with his long legs covering the slope.
I could have turned and gone over the ridge, and he would never have found me.
I could have gone anywhere in the world, with a key in my pocket and a hollow full of people who would have followed.
I stayed where I was.
He hit the cairn at a run, and caught me round the waist, and took me down in the grass.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Alpha Hunts the Exiles, So I Let Him Catch Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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