Chapter 8: The Ridge

The pack ran the ridge every half moon.

That night I stood at the top of it in a borrowed coat and tried to shift.

Below me, a hundred wolves poured through the pines in silver and brown and black.

I could hear them yipping to each other and the scrape of claws on frozen ground.

I had never run with them.

I took off my boots and stood barefoot in the snow.

"Come on," I said through my teeth. "Come on, come on."

I pushed.

I pushed until the muscles in my left arm locked.

My fingers curled into a fist I could not open, and a sound came out of me that was not a word.

Then someone caught my wrist from behind.

"Stop," said Dashiell.

He had not gone down with the others.

He was standing at my back in his shirtsleeves.

He had been there a long time, because the snow on his shoulders had not melted.

"Why aren't you running?" I said.

"Because you aren't."

"That's not the Alpha's job."

"It's tonight's job."

He turned my arm over and pressed his thumbs into the cramped muscle below my elbow, hard and slow.

The knot gave.

My shoulders dropped, and then his hands moved up.

His palms slid over my forearm and the crook of my elbow.

They reached the bare skin above the sleeve, where nobody had ever touched me.

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