Chapter 4: Four Black Wolves

The sea wall of Stormhold ran along the top of the cliff.

By the time I reached it, it was lined with Lycans.

Below us, on the wet black rocks, my four brothers stood in a row.

They had shifted back to men and pulled on the clothes they had left on the shore.

The Beta sat behind them in a little rowboat, holding a lantern in a shaking hand.

Rowan looked up and found me at once.

"Come down," he said.

His voice carried easily over the water. It was the voice he used on the whole pack.

"Come down, and we will go home."

I stood at the parapet in a borrowed grey dress, with the King of the Lycans one step behind me.

"Say my name," I said.

Rowan stopped.

"What?"

"You shouted it a few hours ago. You had not said it since I was nine. Say it again."

His jaw moved. The whole wall was listening.

"Keira," he said.

"It took you eighteen years and a drowning."

"Don't do this," he said. "Not here, not in front of strangers. Come home."

"To what?"

My voice shook for the first time, and I hated it.

"To the room over the garage? To the lock on the outside of the door?"

Drew flinched. Ellis made a small sound.

"Stop performing," Cade called up.

"Nobody forced you into that water. You wanted attention, and you got it."

"You wanted me gone," I said. "You said so on the rock. I heard you."

"I was joking."

"Everybody laughed."

"Enough," Rowan said, and his eyes went to Lucan. "MacDuff. I want my sister back."

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