Mateo Santiago novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Moon Breaks

The pain was not what I had expected.

It was not a knife, and it was not a burn.

It was a seam opening behind my ear.

It was like ice cracking on a lake, a long clean split I could feel in my teeth.

Warm blood ran down my neck into my collar.

"Sofia," my aunt said, and her hand closed on my arm.

The sound of five packs went quiet around me.

Then something under my ribs got to its feet.

I had felt it pace, and listen, and lean toward me in the dark.

I had never felt it stand all the way up.

It came through me.

My knees hit the frozen dirt, and my spine bent, and every bone in my body sang in a high clean note.

My jacket tore at the shoulders.

My hands became paws.

White fur broke through my skin, and the cold air blew through it.

I opened my eyes, and the world was twice as sharp.

I could smell the whole yard at once.

Woodsmoke, wool, horses, fear, and frost, and above it all, one smell I knew better than my own name.

My father.

I smelled him from forty feet away, over the heads of the Alphas.

Pine soap, and the tobacco he pretended he did not smoke.

Under it, thin and sour, was the stink of a man who has just understood that he is afraid.

I turned my head and looked at him.

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