Chapter 10: Silver

"Down," Rhys said.

He shoved me into the roots of the fir, and a rifle cracked on the ridge.

The bullet hit him in the shoulder, and he made a sound I will hear for the rest of my life.

He fell on his side in the moss.

The smell hit me before the sight did, burnt metal and scorched meat.

Silver.

His skin around the hole was already turning grey, and the grey was spreading outward in thin lines.

"Rhys!"

"Don't," he said through his teeth. "Run."

"No."

Another shot hit the trunk above my head, and bark flew in my face.

Five men were coming down the slope in a line, in dark jackets, with their rifles at their shoulders.

I knew every one of them.

They were Black Pine wolves, the men who had carried me on their shoulders at pack picnics when I was eight.

Not one of them looked at my face.

The anger came up from the bottom of my spine, and this time I didn't fight it.

I let the wolf out.

The change came faster than before.

One breath, a pull, a crack, and I was on four legs, white and enormous, in front of the man I had slept beside.

The first hunter stopped.

"Jesus," he said. "Look at the size of her."

I hit him at a dead run.

He went over backward with his rifle spinning off into the ferns.

I put one paw on his chest, and I bared my teeth in his face until he screamed.

The second man fired.

The bullet went through the fur on my flank and burned like a hot wire.

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