Chapter 5: The Line of the Lake

The first night in Hazel's cabin, six women showed up with food.

I had expected one casserole.

The baker from the pack kitchen brought bread and a jar of plum jam.

The woman who ran the laundry house brought a space heater and a cedar-scented quilt.

A she-wolf I had never spoken to in two years stood on the porch with a pot of soup.

"I'm not here to ask anything," she said. "I'm just here."

I sat at Hazel's kitchen table with my feet in wool socks and ate three bowls.

"You can stop looking at the door," Hazel said.

"I'm not."

"You've been looking at it since six."

At dusk on the second day, I understood why.

I was on the porch with a mug of tea when the gravel at the end of the lake path shifted.

Ronan came out of the trees and stopped at the line.

It was a plain white fence post at the edge of Hazel's land, with a strand of wire running off either side.

He didn't cross it.

I stayed where I was, and he stayed where he was, and the lake went from gold to gray between us.

"You're not supposed to be here," I said.

"The term says I don't enter the cabin. This isn't the cabin."

"It's a loophole."

"It's a fence post."

"Did you think about that all day?"

"I thought about it on the drive," Ronan said.

He had both hands on the post.

I could see his knuckles from forty feet away.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Unbonding the Ruthless Alpha from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.