Chapter 20: Silver

Gideon was in his trousers before I found my dress.

"Rogues," he said, listening to the phone. "How many?"

Toby's voice rattled out of the speaker, too fast to follow.

"Six," Gideon repeated. "Armed. She paid them with a promise of our southern ridge."

He hung up.

"Stay in this room. Lock the door. Don't come out for anyone but me."

"Gideon."

"Please."

He kissed my forehead hard and went out.

I did not stay.

I took my grandmother's hunter's gun down from the hooks over the kitchen door.

It was loaded with ordinary shot. The only silver she had kept lay locked in a tin under the hearth.

I didn't think it would matter.

Then I stood in the dark kitchen with the gun against my shoulder and saw them come up the lane.

Six shapes came low and fast along the hedge.

They were wolves already, grey and brown and scarred, and they ran silent.

Gideon met them in the yard.

He did not change at once.

He stood in front of the porch, bare-chested, with his arms loose at his sides.

"You're on my Luna's land," he said. "Turn around."

One of the wolves went human halfway, a lean man with a shaved head.

"We've no quarrel with you, Alpha," he said. "Hand us the woman and the pup, and we'll go."

The air in the yard changed.

I stopped breathing.

"Who sent you?"

"A friend of yours. She said you'd know."

Gideon's wolf came up through his skin.

He took the first one down in a heartbeat.

The second went over the fence.

The third tore at his back, and Gideon spun and threw it into the woodpile.

I stood at the window with the gun and could not fire for fear of hitting him.

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