Chapter 4: The Scent Hunt

The Scent Hunt began at dawn, in the forest behind Harrowgate, with a hundred spectators lining the rope.

The rules fit on one card.

A runner had dragged a bloody rag through the woods before sunrise, and the wolves of both packs had to follow its trail to the Bowl.

The first pack to carry the silver flag across the Bowl's center line won the round.

Each pack sent three.

Blackpine sent Ronan, the Beta and a lean young tracker with a shaved head.

Ashfall sent me, Bram and one of the quiet brothers.

"Don't fight them in the trees," Odessa had told me at the start line. "Let them think you're slow. Fight where the stands can see."

The horn blew.

I shifted in two heartbeats, and the forest tore open into smell and sound.

My wolf was black, with a gray mask, and almost twice as big as the girl I used to be.

In Blackpine they had called me the runt.

Nobody had said that word to me since the day I turned and Odessa stopped breathing for a second.

I took the trail at a flat run.

Bram's rust-red wolf crashed along on my left, tongue already lolling, and the brother ghosted off to the right.

Blackpine ran the same line, a hundred yards back.

I could hear them in my ears, the Beta's heavy paws and the tracker's quick ones.

And I could hear Ronan.

His wolf was running slower than he should have.

I knew the sound of him better than I knew my own.

Three years ago he had run.

Now there was a catch in his breath and a drag in his stride, and when I glanced back through the trees I saw his wolf at last.

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