Chapter 5: Ridgeback

Joss drove with one hand on the wheel and said nothing for the first ten miles.

His truck smelled of dog and diesel.

My bag sat between my boots, and the heater blew warm air on my shins.

I kept expecting a lecture, or a question about the road and the man I hadn't seen.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked at last.

"Three reasons."

"Name them."

"One, Lucan Ellington told his whole pack nobody could help you." He glanced at me. "I don't take orders from him."

"Two?"

"Two, you're a witness. You stood closer to that blade than anyone, and you don't want to tell me what you saw. I'd like you where I can ask again."

I looked out at the dark pines.

"And three?"

"Three, you gave back a ring in front of three hundred people and never raised your voice."

He turned onto a gravel road.

"I wanted to see if you'd keep it up."

The Ridgeback house was a long, ugly farmhouse with a wraparound porch, lit in every window.

Wolves were everywhere.

Two girls sat on the steps in matching pyjamas and stared at my hands.

A man on the roof was fixing a gutter by flashlight.

A woman with flour to her elbows came out the door, took one look at me, and turned to Joss.

"You said she'd be hungry. You didn't say she'd be grey."

"This is Valerie."

"Don't care what her name is, she's sitting down." She took my bag out of my hand. "Soup. Bread. Eat or I'll sit on you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start This Time, I Won't Beg for His Mark from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.