In Heat for My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Forty Seconds

"Then we time it," I said.

Judd looked at me across the roof of my truck.

"Time what?"

"Stage to your room. In the dark. If two hundred wolves saw him on the stage, I want to know how long they'd have to stop seeing him."

"You want to go back into the packhouse."

"I was just in it."

"Liesel, if anyone catches you..."

"Nobody catches me. That's the whole problem with me."

"Saturday," he said. "The elders meet in town Saturday night. Dad goes, and half the house goes with him."

That Saturday, at a quarter to one in the morning, I stood on the little stage in the empty great hall.

Judd stood at the breaker panel by the kitchen door with his hand on the main.

"Ready?" he called softly.

"Kill it."

The hall went black.

Black, the kind you can feel on your eyeballs.

"How well can you see?" I whispered.

"Better than you," he said from across the room. "Not much better. Not in skin."

"And if you'd been staring at stage lights all night?"

He was quiet for a second.

"Nothing," he said. "For a minute, nothing at all."

"Start counting," I said.

I went off the back of the stage.

Down to the back corridor, then to the foot of the back stair.

Up the stair.

The upstairs hall, left.

Judd's door.

"Thirty-eight," Judd said behind me.

I spun.

He was standing at the top of the stair, a big black shape against the dark.

"Thirty-nine," he said. "Forty."

"Forty seconds," I said.

"Forty seconds."

"Everybody on that lawn was looking at the moon or the stage lights," I said. "Then the lights died, and they were blind, and every wolf in the hall turned to look at the windows. Somebody howled. Somebody laughed. Nobody was watching the man standing next to the Alpha."

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