Chapter 13: A Full Minute

I dressed in the dark, fast, with my hands shaking.

Ezra was already at the door with his boots in his fist.

"Wait," I said.

He turned.

I had been carrying it since the kitchen, and I could not carry it one more step.

"You sat in the truck," I said.

He did not ask what I meant.

"A full minute. You heard him call me nothing in front of the whole school, and you stayed in the cab with your hand on the door."

"Yes."

"I stood in that lot alone."

"I know."

"Clover had to tell me. You told me about the wolfsbane at dawn and you did not tell me that."

"I should have."

"You should have gotten out of the truck."

My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated it.

Ezra put the boots down.

He did not come closer.

"The law said I could not," he said. "I want you to know I have never hated a law more."

"That doesn't help."

"I know it doesn't. I am not saying it to help."

Tilda paced inside me, wanting to forgive him.

I would not let her.

"I will not pretend it didn't happen," I said. "I will not say it's fine."

"Don't say it's fine."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because you said it to my face," he said quietly. "Nobody has ever done that. I'd rather have it than your silence."

I stared at him.

It was not what I had wanted him to say.

It was not what I had expected, either.

"We have a sister to find," I said, and walked past him into the hall.

Ezra's wolves were already in the yard.

Eleven of them stood in the gray light, stamping against the cold.

Two of the Seer's witnesses had come too, and four Redwood trackers I knew from school.

One of them was a boy who had sat behind me in class for years, and he would not meet my eyes.

Keep reading free with an account. Start "I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.