Chapter 4: The Silver Wolf

The fever came back at sunset, worse than the night before.

I was sitting on my own kitchen floor again when the knock came.

I didn't have to ask who it was.

I opened the door.

Lachlan stood on the porch with his hands in his coat pockets.

His gaze was fixed on a point above my head.

"Put on boots," he said. "You're coming for a run."

"I don't run."

"You do now."

"Lachlan, I've never shifted. Not once. Cade says my wolf's broken."

He went still.

"Cade says a lot of things," he said. "Boots."

I put on boots.

He drove us up the logging road until the truck couldn't go any farther.

Then he walked ahead of me into the pines without waiting to see if I followed.

Snow squeaked under our feet, and the sky had gone violet.

At the edge of a frozen meadow, he stopped and turned around.

"The fever isn't illness," he said. "It's your wolf. She's been shut in a very small room, and tonight she wants out."

"She's never come out before."

"She was never allowed."

"Allowed by who?"

He didn't answer that. He held out his right hand, palm up, the bandaged one.

"I'm going to touch the back of your neck," he said. "Tell me no, and I won't."

My heart was pounding in both my ears.

"Do it," I said.

He stepped behind me.

His hand came down on the back of my neck, warm and heavy and entirely steady, and everything in me went quiet.

I heard him breathe out behind my ear.

"There she is," he said, so low I almost missed it.

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