Chapter 20: The Old House

Torin's POV

My phone rang while I was still looking at the empty blanket.

It said Father.

I answered it with my thumb and put it to my ear and said nothing.

"The old house on the pass road," Aldric said.

"Come alone and quickly, and bring your wolfless woman if you like. I would rather she saw."

"Where are my children?"

"Safe," he said.

"For the length of an evening."

He hung up.

Ingrid was already on her feet.

She had read it off my face, and she did not ask.

"Where?"

"The hunting house. Where your parents..."

"I know where."

Her glasses reflected the last of the light, and her eyes behind them were flat and bright.

I took a step, and my knee gave.

I caught myself on her arm.

It was humiliating, and I did not care.

My legs had become lead.

I could feel my own wolf, what there was of it, curled small and shivering under my ribs.

"You can't run," Ingrid said.

"I'll run."

"Torin."

She put her palm flat between my shoulder blades.

Heat poured into me.

It was the wolf, hers, and it came through her hand into my spine.

My legs came back under me.

My vision cleared.

It was strength I had carried for twenty years without knowing whose it was.

She had lent a piece of it back.

"Better?" she said.

"Yes."

"Don't thank me."

"I wasn't going to."

Her mouth twitched.

"Good."

The pack had not left the meadow.

They stood where they had turned their backs on Briony, two hundred of them, watching their Alpha sway.

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