The End of Us novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Far Bank

Keith's POV

Quinton Dunstan howled at the river for an hour that night, and I stood on the cabin porch and listened to every note of it.

I had heard a mate call across a distance before.

I had never heard one so badly out of tune.

Then, a little after midnight, the cabin behind me answered.

It was not a loud sound.

It was a low, startled note, from a throat that had never learned to make it, and it came through the wall of the cabin.

I knew it at once.

I had heard that note once before, from the bank of a river, in March, when I was fourteen years old.

I put my hand flat on the porch rail and held on.

Seventeen years ago, my father left me in his truck on the north bank of the Dunstan river and told me to stay put.

I went down to the water to throw rocks.

Alpha Sheridan came down the far bank with his coat over his arm, and he lifted a hand to me across the water.

Then a woman in a grey coat stepped out of the trees behind him.

I saw the iron ring on her hand.

I saw her put a blade into his back.

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