Chapter 9: Say It Out Loud

Joss walked down the drive, and I walked beside him.

He'd told me to stay in the house, and I had told him no.

Four trucks sat nose to nose across the gate with their lights on.

Doyle Brask stood in the middle of the headlights in his black wool coat, with eight Cold Spur wolves behind him.

Hester wasn't there, and neither was Lucan.

"Galloway," Doyle said. "I've got a council writ."

He held up a piece of paper.

"Stolen property. A set of pack ledgers, and one witness who left the hall without leave." He looked at me. "She comes home with us."

"She's not property," Joss said.

"She's unplaced. Under pack law, she belongs to whoever picks her up first."

"Then you're too late. She's my guest."

"She's a rogue sleeping in your house." Doyle's voice sharpened. "Hand her over, or I'll go in and take her."

A younger wolf behind him flicked his eyes to my hands.

I had put them in my pockets.

I took them out.

Black claws came with them, and I let them show.

"Doyle," I said. "Look at me."

He did.

Under the headlights, I saw his face properly for the first time in my life.

Thick neck. Crooked nose. A grey harvest ribbon still knotted at his collar, the same ribbon I had seen on the man with the blade.

My stomach turned over.

It wasn't the same man. That man had been smaller, narrower.

But the knot was the same.

Doyle tied a Cold Spur ribbon the way his father had taught him, the way only the Brask family knotted them, with the loop turned under.

I had seen that knot behind Lucan's back with the silver rising over it.

He saw me looking at his collar.

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