Chapter 9 · Scent of Betrayal

The wolf came out of the fog as a sound first. Not a growl. A wet, hitched drag of air, like a bellows with a hole punched through it.

I had a rock in my fist before I told my hand to move. Good rock. Fist-sized, one edge already sharp from busting up through the gravel.

Bitterroot sat on my tongue like green chalk. I swallowed, and my stomach rolled over, and the cramp came low and mean, the way it had been coming every twenty minutes since I cut the dose in half. I breathed through it. Counted to four. Felt the blood, warm and wrong, where it had no business being.

Since the altar. Since the vault. The river had taken the rest of the night, and nothing in me had moved. Six weeks. Too early to fight for space.

Stubborn. Fine. Runs in the family.

The wolf broke the fog line and stopped dead.

Not Torin's wolf. I knew Torin's wolf the way you know your own front door in the dark. That gray-black head, the way he carried his shoulders.