A Pack of Their Own novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Ironwood Scouts

Six men in canvas vests stood at the gate of Dunmore Ridge, and every one of them had a rifle.

Grandpa met them at the fence with no gun at all.

Behind him the whole clan had come out of the cabins and lined the slope.

Thirty big, silent people stood with their arms folded.

Nana Bess stood at the front with a rolling pin.

I stood at the back, behind Callie, with my hands jammed under my arms so nobody would see them shaking.

"Ironwood scouts," Grandpa said. "You're a long way from your trees."

"We're tracking," the lead hunter said.

He was a thick man with a gray crew cut and a badge pinned over his heart.

"A healer at Moon Rise talked in her sleep. She said a girl's wound closed in an hour."

My stomach dropped.

"We followed the scent from the Hargrove house, and it ends at this gate."

"That's not much of a trail," Grandpa said.

"It's enough for the Alpha to want a look."

"Then he can ask me himself."

"He will. In three days."

The hunter's eyes slid over the line of faces, and he sniffed the air.

It was not a polite look. He was counting us.

"Funny," he said. "I smell bear."

Nobody on the slope moved.

"And I'd bet my badge there's more than one of you who can't tell me why."

I felt it before I understood it.

It started low in my chest as a pressure that climbed through my ribs and into my arms.

My bear had heard that word said in that voice, and she was angry.

"Winona," Callie whispered. "Winona, your hands."

I looked down.

Brown fur was spreading across my knuckles. My nails were black and thick.

I could not stop it. I could not breathe through it. Roark wasn't here to say it to me.

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