Chapter 6: The Voice

On the sixth morning, Bram tried to call his wolf on purpose.

He stood in the middle of the yard in a T-shirt in the cold, with his eyes shut and his fists clenched.

The outcasts lined the porches.

The one-eyed man had brought a lawn chair.

"Don't think about it," the young man with the leg brace called. "That's what my wolf says. Stop thinking."

"Your wolf says that because it's an idiot," the widow said.

Bram's shoulders bunched.

His spine bowed.

Black fur ran up his forearms and his hands curled into something halfway to paws.

Then it caught.

He went down on one knee in the frost, shaking, stuck between, his face half a muzzle and half a man's.

The sound he made wasn't a word.

I was across the yard before anyone else moved.

I knelt in front of him and took his face in both hands, fur and beard and all.

"Look at me."

Gold eyes found mine.

"It's stuck," he got out. "It won't go either way."

"Then don't push it. Breathe."

I'd said the same thing to forty women in the birthing house.

I'd never thought I'd say it to a man with half a wolf's face.

He breathed.

Slowly, the fur slid back down his arms.

The one-eyed man clapped twice from his lawn chair.

"Better than yesterday," he said. "Yesterday you just fell over."

That was when the cars came down the track.

Three of them.

The Alpha's black SUV in front, his Beta's truck behind, and a little white convertible with the top up against the cold.

Corbin got out in a camel coat.

His Beta got out with two big men from the Kingsbury house.

Sienna got out last and stayed by her car with her fur collar turned up to her ears.

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