The Wolf Who Can't Shift Just Dropped One novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Silver in the Dark

Brock comes for her at night with a silver chain, and when she grabs Corbin's arm his claws come out whole for the first time in years.

The lock on my door clicked at two in the morning.

I was already awake, sitting on the bed with my boots on.

Wynne had put me in the room beside her brother's, so he would hear anything that happened.

I had decided not to need him.

Three men came in without a sound.

The one in front was my cousin Brock, six feet one, with a pack tattoo on his forearm and a coil of chain in his fist.

"Hey, Lara," he said. "Dad wants you home before the vote."

"Guest-right," I said. "Corbin's roof. Get out."

"It's a long way to the roof from here. Nobody's going to hear a thing."

The other two spread out on either side of the bed.

I stood up and hit the one on the left, and he folded over with his hands on his stomach.

The one on the right got my braid, and Brock got my wrists.

He was a lot stronger than I was.

He had been stronger than me since we were six, and he had never once let me forget it.

"Silver," Brock said, and wound the chain twice around my wrists.

It burned.

It was a thin, bright line of pain, and a red welt came up under the links almost at once.

I gritted my teeth and said nothing, because I wasn't going to give him that.

Brock stopped smiling.

He stared at my wrists much longer than a man enjoying himself would have.

"Dad said it wouldn't," he said quietly.

"Wouldn't what?"

"Shut up."

"Wouldn't what, Brock?"

He jerked the chain tight, and the wall beside the bed split open.

I didn't understand it at first.

The wall between my room and the next had a connecting door, and Corbin had put his shoulder through it.

He was barefoot, in gray sweatpants and no shirt, and his gloved hand was already on Brock's collar.

"Let go of her," Corbin said.

His voice was low and full of gravel.

His claws were out, half grown and dark at the tips.

I could see what it cost him to keep them from growing any further.

The man holding my braid let go and ran.

Brock didn't.

He dropped my wrists and swung the loose end of the chain in one long, ugly arc.

It caught Corbin across the bare forearm and hissed against his skin.

Corbin went down on one knee with a noise I'd never heard a man make.

"There it is," said Brock, breathing hard. "Half a wolf, and it can't even take a chain."

I pulled the links off my own wrists without feeling it.

I crossed the floor and got down beside Corbin.

I grabbed his burned arm with both hands, above the chain, where the skin was still whole.

My hands were hot the way they always were.

I didn't think about rule two.

The chain slid off his forearm and hit the floor, and the burn stopped spreading.

Something went through my hands and up my arms, a pulse of heat, and it went into him.

Corbin's head came up.

His claws grew.

They went black and long and whole, and his shoulders widened under my fingers.

His eyes were gold and they were looking at me.

Brock backed up until he hit the bed.

"No," Brock said. "That's not possible."

Corbin turned his head and looked at him.

I felt the growl before I heard it.

It came up through his arm and into my palms, and Brock ran for the door with the third man behind him.

The door banged against the wall.

Their boots went away down the east stairs.

The room was very quiet, and there was snow ticking on the window.

Corbin was still kneeling and I was still holding on.

His skin under my hands was hotter than mine, and his pulse was going hard.

The long black claws were still out, slowly curling into his palm.

"You can stop now," I said.

"I know."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

He didn't answer.

I let go.

It was the wrong thing to do.

The claws went out of his hands and the gold went out of his eyes.

He caught himself on the floor and knelt there, shaking from his shoulders down.

He was gray in the face.

"Corbin?"

"Don't do that again," he said.

"Do what? Take the chain off you?"

"Stop."

He said it into the floorboards, to nobody, in a voice I didn't know what to do with.

I put my hands in my lap, because they wanted very badly to go back.

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