Chapter 21: What He Would Not Do

Rodrick's POV

I crawled the last thirty yards on my belly with my wolf screaming in my skull.

The ridge was broken granite, and every stone I passed was cold under my chest.

Through the bond I could feel her.

She was steady as a post, with the bow drawn and her breath held.

That was the worst thing about her.

She could hold a draw forever, and Dalton knew it, and he was using her patience to hold her still.

I came up behind the last boulder on the rim and looked over.

Two Henshaw wolves held Junie, one at each arm.

A third stood a pace behind Dalton, with a hunting blade at his belt and nothing in his face.

Dalton had the cup against Junie's mouth.

She had her lips clamped shut and her eyes screwed closed, and cider was running down her chin.

She was nineteen.

She was holding out against a double dose of thorn with nothing but a girl's stubbornness.

Don't swallow, I thought. Just don't swallow.

I could have gone straight for Dalton.

I measured it.

Eight feet of rock, one jump, and my teeth in the soft place where his coat opened at the collar.

I wanted it so badly my jaws ached.

I thought of Tam, and the cup in the firelight four years ago, and the girl in the snow with her hair full of ice.

I thought of Tegan in the bathhouse, laughing into my neck.

He's hers, I told my wolf.

My wolf argued with me.

He is hers, I said again. She gets the shot. It's her arrow, and her sister, and her four years.

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