Chapter 18 · For the Second

His hand closed around my wrist before I heard him move.

That's Valerius. Thirty years of Alpha blood in him and he still moves like something with no bones — no snapped twigs, no crushed leaves. Just a wall of heat at my back, cedar smoke and cold iron, and then his fingers locked and he hauled me out of the blackberry bramble like a weed he was pulling by the roots.

Mud to his knees. Sleeves shoved past the elbow. A scratch down his jaw he hadn't bothered to wipe.

My spine hit the oak. The whole forest went small.

"Seventeen days," he said.

I kept my breathing flat. My wolf clawed at the inside of my ribs, pure panic, and I shoved her down in the dark and shut the door.

"You counted?"

"My land tells me." His head tilted. Nostrils flared. Tasting the air. "Except it's telling me nothing. What'd you do?"

A cut bond doesn't report home. So something walked him out here, and it wasn't land.

Pine tar. Crushed mint. I'd smeared half the healer's border stock across my throat and my belly till I smelled like a candle shop instead of a woman.