Chapter 5: No More Tea

Lucan stood on the white stones for a full minute with his hand pressed to his chest.

Emmett walked down the porch steps and stopped on his own side of the line.

"Go home, Sterne," he said. "Whatever that is, it won't get better on my land."

Lucan looked at me one last time.

Then he turned, climbed into the truck, and let his enforcers drive him away.

I stayed on the porch until the dust settled.

"Does he do that a lot?" Emmett asked.

"I've never seen it."

"Huh."

That was all he said, and he went back to his woodpile.

I slept in the spare room that night on a bed with a patchwork quilt, with my duffel at my feet.

By the third day I had stopped waking at five in the morning for no reason.

By the fourth I was waking at three, with my skin too tight and the quilt unbearable.

I lay in the dark and listened.

The woman on patrol was snoring in the next room.

The stove ticked.

I could hear a mouse in the wall, and an owl two miles off, and my own pulse in my ears.

I had never heard any of it before.

My wolf had been quiet since I was eighteen.

Gammas are not loud wolves, but mine had been close to silent.

Now she was up and pacing.

At dawn I went out and ran the fence with the lanky patrol woman.

Colours were brighter.

The cedar smelled sharper, and the creek smelled of every stone it had touched.

I passed her on the last hill without trying.

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