Chapter 18: Snow

I shifted in the hall doorway with the whole pack watching, and my dress tore down the seam.

I did not care. The snow outside was fresh, and the old Beta's tracks ran across it like a signature.

Conall shifted beside me, a big dark wolf at my shoulder, and we ran.

Wind poured through my fur. I could smell the old man's fear from a quarter mile off, sour and oily.

He ran.

He cut down through the pines, over the logging road, and down the steep bank toward the creek.

I knew the creek.

I had never seen it, but my feet knew it, and the wolf in me went quiet and cold.

He reached the water and stopped.

It was frozen at the edges and black in the middle, and it ran too fast to cross.

He turned around with his back to it and pulled a knife out of his boot.

The blade was silver. I could smell it from where I stood.

I shifted back, shivering, on the bank, with Conall's body between me and the blade.

"Put it down," I said.

"I'll cut you open," the old Beta said. His breath came in gasps. "I'll finish what the bullet didn't."

"What the bullet didn't?"

He stared at me, and I saw him understand that he had said too much.

"Moonfall," Conall said. He had shifted back too, and he stood bare and enormous in the cold. "You were there."

"I was behind the trees," the old man said.

Something in his face gave way.

"The shot was meant for you, boy. Not for her. I wanted you off that seat. You were soft, like your father was soft, and I'd served a better man."

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