The Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Day Thirty

I shifted before I knew I had.

Edric saw the white wolf coming across the stone with its teeth bare.

He stepped back, and for the first time in his life he looked afraid.

"Hold," he said to the men. "Hold her."

Nobody moved.

The Beta stood up off his belly and stepped between us, grey and enormous, and lowered his head.

He did not growl.

He just stood there, in front of me, with his flank to his Alpha.

Edric looked at him.

"You too," he said.

The Beta said nothing.

I wanted to tear out Edric's throat.

Hesper said, "Not here."

"He killed my mother."

"And he will say so, before all of them. Do you want it said in a hole in the ground, or in the light?"

I stood there, shaking with rage.

Then I changed back.

I looked at the man who had murdered my mother and put a silver blade through the one I loved.

"Go upstairs," I said. "Go and tell the pack what you did."

His mouth worked.

"I'll be at the clearing at moonrise on the day the moon is full."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Run," I said, "before I change my mind."

He went up the steps with his men trailing after him and a hand pressed hard to his own heart.

I dropped on the floor beside Cormick.

Hattie had already cut his shirt open.

She pulled the blade out in one clean movement and threw it clanging across the stone.

Cormick made a sound I will remember until I die.

The wound didn't close.

It bled slow and black around the edges, and the skin around it had gone grey.

"Silver," Hattie said, grimly. "A wolf can heal almost anything but that."

"Will he live?"

"I'll keep him breathing. I don't know for how long."

She kept him breathing for sixteen days.

On the thirtieth, at dusk, I sat on the edge of the narrow bed in my old room.

Cormick lay with his eyes open and his hand in mine.

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