Chapter 5: A Hand on the Wrist

The wardens went home without me, and they told every wolf at Harrow Ridge that they had bowed to the Luna.

I heard it from Dessa by phone at breakfast.

"They're saying it at the packhouse," she said. "Torin broke a chair."

"I told them it was habit."

"Fern, nobody bows out of habit to a woman who just quit the Alpha."

"I'll think about it," I said, and hung up before she could ask what.

Kurt sat at the end of the kitchen table with a cup of black coffee and let me not explain.

The broad woman in the apron was the lodge cook.

She put a plate of eggs in front of me and glared until I ate.

I stayed three days.

Cinder Creek ran on rules I hadn't seen at Harrow Ridge.

The Alpha cleared his own plate and washed his own cup.

Two teenagers argued with him about a fence line and won.

Nobody asked me for anything, and nobody watched to see if I would break.

On the third night I dreamed of the Moon Stone.

It was the same dream I'd had both nights before, only it went on longer.

I knelt in the sleet and felt the cramp start.

I said her name over and over.

My name came back to me out of the dark, closer and closer.

"Fern."

A hand closed around my wrist.

I woke with my heart thudding and my fist already swinging, and I stopped it an inch from Kurt's jaw.

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