Chapter 7: The Terms

I stood up between them.

Garrick rose a second after me, and Dorian's two men moved forward with their hands loose.

"Put the knife down, Dorian," I said.

"He crossed my border."

"I crossed his. I sat down next to him. He didn't touch the line until I asked him to."

"That's not how the stones work."

"Then the stones can work around me."

Dorian looked at the knife in his hand, and then at my bandaged palm.

I saw the moment he decided.

He turned the blade in his fingers and slid it back into the sheath at his hip.

"One rule," he said. "He's on his side or he's dead. Say the word."

"I'm going to say more than one word," I said. "You both listen."

The two of them stared at me.

My heart was going fast, and I held on to my coat with my good hand so nobody would see it shake.

"Twenty-seven days," I said. "I have twenty-seven days."

"I'm not going to spend them watching two Alphas bare their teeth across a pile of rocks."

"Tilda," Garrick said.

"I'm talking. Here are the terms."

I looked at Garrick first.

"You stay on your side of these stones. You do not follow me, you do not cross, and you do not touch me."

"Not my hand, not my shoulder, nothing. If you want to see me, you ask Dorian, and I decide."

"Understood."

"And every day, you tell me one true thing. You tell it to my face. It can't be a thing I already know."

His eyes held mine.

"Every day," he said.

"Every day until the thirty-first. And if you can't say one, you say so, and I count it as a lie."

"That's fair."

"I'm not asking if it's fair."

I turned to Dorian.

"And you witness it. If either of us breaks it, you say so in front of your pack."

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