His Mate, His Enemy novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Stone

Corinna's POV

Brynn stopped on the Blackwater side of the river line with the baby on her shoulder and waited to be seen.

Molly saw her first, from the farmhouse porch.

"Your friend's at the road," she said. "Tell me you're not going."

"I'm going."

"Take Dane."

"I'm taking Dane."

He walked beside me down the lane with his hands in his coat pockets and said nothing, which was how I knew he meant to hit someone if it came to it.

Brynn's face crumpled when she saw me.

"Cori."

I stopped a yard from the line and didn't cross it.

"Don't," I said.

"Lorcan told them something terrible about me. He's trying to make the pack hate me so he can get you back."

"He told them what the Moon-Keeper found."

"She found nothing. It's his guilt." She was crying, and her braid had come half undone. "You know me. You know I would never."

I looked at the baby's small fist against her collar.

I had held that boy in Molly's yard and hated how much I wanted to.

"Tomorrow at dusk you'll stand in front of her," I said. "If you didn't do it, there's nothing to be afraid of."

"I'm afraid because nobody listens to me!"

Her voice cracked across the water.

It was the first thing she'd said in a month that sounded entirely true.

"Brynn."

"I carried his son alone," she said. "You had four years of him. I had one night and a bandage and a mark I had to hide from everyone I loved."

I went very still.

Dane's head turned toward me.

I could hear boots on the road behind her.

A great many boots.

They came over the rise in a long dark line, Lorcan in front with the three elders and the beta, and behind them the whole of Blackwater.

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Mate, His Enemy from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.