Chapter 8: The Border

Dane waited for me on the north line, at the old culvert, on the second night.

I should have expected it.

I walked the north line every night, with two other scouts, and Dane knew my route better than I did.

The two scouts came up the path behind me.

They stopped when they saw him, and I felt them stop.

He stood in the middle of the culvert road with snow on his shoulders and no coat.

"Send them home," he said.

"They're on duty."

"I'm the Alpha. Send them home."

I looked over my shoulder.

Both of them stayed where they were, with their eyes on the ground.

Neither of them left.

"Fine," said Dane. "Stay. Watch, then."

He came toward me fast.

He took my wrist in one hand and my jaw in the other.

I felt his nose drag along the skin of my neck.

He was scent-marking me.

It is the oldest, crudest thing a wolf can do, and it means you are mine.

"You smell like him," he said, and his voice was shaking. "You smell like the King."

"Let go."

"Two nights I've sat alone in that house. Two nights. I made a mistake, I made seven, I know. I'm sorry. Is that what you want to hear?"

"I wanted to hear it seven years ago."

"I'm saying it now!"

"You're saying it because you'll lose the pack."

"I'm saying it because I love you!"

He yelled it, and it echoed off the culvert.

My stomach turned over, because for six years I had wanted him to say it just like that.

Then I looked at his hand on my wrist.

It was the same hand that had cut me at the Stone.

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