Chapter 5: The Cut Hand

On the third morning the Council's truck came up the ridge road with its lights on.

Two Blood Moon enforcers climbed out at the sawmill gate.

I knew them both.

One had taught me to throw a knife when I was fifteen.

The other had carried me home on his back after I twisted my ankle at patrol camp.

Neither of them looked at me now.

"Dorian Ketch," said the older one, a gray-haired man with a black Council armband.

"By order of the Blood Moon Council, the ward Tilda Swinburne is called home. Hand her over."

Dorian came down off the porch with a coffee mug in his hand.

"She's a guest under my roof," he said. "She isn't a parcel."

"She's a wolf of our pack."

"Until the first of November. And on the thirty-first, if she wants it, she's my ward."

"Then we'll take her and save you the trouble."

"Try it," Dorian said, and set the mug on the fence post.

It went bad fast.

Three of the Iron Hollow men came down behind him, and the younger enforcer drew a short blade from his belt.

The edge of it had a dull white sheen.

I knew that sheen.

It was silver-edged steel, the kind that slows a wolf's healing, and the Council only issued it for killing.

"Put that away," Dorian said, flat and quiet.

"Stand back, Ketch."

"Put it away."

I was standing between Odette and the porch step, and Odette had come out with her wooden spoon.

The younger enforcer swung wide, aiming at Dorian's arm.

Dorian caught it, and the two of them locked up, and the blade came round in a flat arc toward Odette's face.

I did not think.

I caught the blade in my bare hand.

It cut through the meat of my palm, deep, and the pain went white and loud.

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