Chapter 17: Lachlan's POV

Lachlan's POV

Cade's teeth closed on my foreleg, and I felt it go to the bone.

I threw him off and rolled.

My wolf was slow.

I had known it for three years, in the mornings, in the mirror, in the way the ridge tired me out.

A wolf without his mate starves, and I had starved on purpose.

Tonight I could feel every skipped meal of it in my legs.

Cade circled me, light on his feet, tongue lolling.

He was faster.

He was young, and he was fed, and he had spent three years watching me waste.

He lunged, and I met him chest to chest.

We went down in a tangle of fur and dirt, and the pack roared.

I got my jaws around his ruff and shook, and he yelped and twisted.

His claws raked down my side.

It was the third time he had done it.

This time, under the blood and the heat and the smell of fire, I caught a thin sharp tang on the wind.

Bitter.

Green.

I knew it.

Every child in Cold Creek was taught the smell before they were taught to read.

Wolfsbane.

The cuts down my ribs began to burn, and the burn was wrong.

It ran along the nerve.

He had coated his claws.

My nephew had stood in front of two hundred wolves and an old man's staff and sworn to fight clean, and he had painted his claws with poison.

I tried to turn.

My back leg folded.

The world went white at the edges.

I hit the dirt on my side, and my head struck the swept ground.

Above me, the sandy wolf stood over my body with his lips drawn back.

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