Chapter 1 The Silver Fist

Mercy POV

The first punch tells me he's cheating.

It lands on my cheek, and the skin there hisses. I smell it before I feel it, like a match dropped on wet hair. Silver. He has silver rings under the tape on his knuckles.

I hit the dirt floor of the pit. The barn lights swing above me. Somebody's beer splashes across my boots.

"Stay down, rogue!" a man yells from the rail.

"Get up, Hask!" another one shouts. "I got fifty on you!"

The big man stands over me and grins. His name is Dutch, and he's never beaten me. Not once. Tonight he hits like he's been promised something.

"You're done," he says. "Tap out."

I spit blood into the dirt. "You first."

He swings again. I roll. His fist slams the floor where my head was, and the rings leave four black marks in the dirt. Smoke curls up from them.

That could have been my eye.

I think about Wade in the trailer, coughing into the blue towel. I think about the four hundred dollars, and the little brown bottle of tincture on the shelf at Kip's trading post, waiting for me like it knows my name.

I get up.

Dutch comes in low. I let him. His shoulder cracks into my ribs, and something inside me gives, the way ice gives on a pond. My breath goes thin. But now he's close, and close is where I live.

I grab the back of his neck and drive his head into the corner post.

Once. Twice.

He drops.

The barn goes crazy. People bang on the rail. Somebody throws a hat. Kip climbs into the pit with his cash box and lifts my arm like I'm a prize pig.

"Mercy Hask!" he yells. "Still undefeated!"

When the crowd turns back to the beer, I pull him close. "He had silver on his hands, Kip."

Kip doesn't look surprised. He looks at Dutch, still face-down in the dirt, and he mutters, "Idiot wasn't supposed to use them till the third round."

I stare at him.

"Supposed to?" I say. "Who told him to use them at all?"

Kip counts out my money too fast. "Nobody. Forget it. Here's your four hundred. Tincture's on the shelf."

"Kip."

"Go home, Mercy. Your old man doesn't have all night."

He's right about that. So I take the money and the bottle, and I don't push. But the question rides with me all the way up the mountain, bouncing around my head like a loose bolt.

Somebody wanted me hurt tonight. Not beaten. Hurt.

The camp sits in a bowl of pines above Darby. Six trailers, two cook fires, one broken-down school bus where the kids sleep. When my headlights hit the clearing, Boone is already outside Wade's trailer, smoking a cigarette he's not supposed to have.

He sees my face. "Who did that?"

"Dutch."

"Dutch can't hit you."

"He can with silver."

Boone's jaw moves like he's chewing glass. He flicks the cigarette into the snow. "I'll kill him."

"You'll sit with Dad," I say, and push past him.

Inside, the trailer smells like sweat and pine sap and the sour medicine smell that's been there for two weeks. Wade is propped up on three pillows. His skin is the color of old dishwater. Silver fever eats you from the inside, slow, like rust.

I kneel by the bed and pull the cork out of the bottle with my teeth. "Open up, old man. I bled for this."

Wade turns his head away.

"Dad."

"Save it," he whispers. "Sell it back. It's past that now."

"It's not past anything. Open your mouth."

He lifts one shaking hand and pushes the bottle down. His fingers are cold. Too cold. "Mercy. Listen to me. I don't have the breath to say it twice."

Boone is in the doorway now. Neither of us moves.

Wade reaches under his pillow. He pulls out something small and yellow and folds my hand around it. I open my fingers. It's a hospital ankle tag, the tiny plastic kind they put on babies. The ink is faded, but I can still read it.

Redfern, girl.

I read it three times. The letters don't change.

"What is this?" I ask.

"It's yours," Wade says. "You were born with it on."

Boone laughs, one short, ugly laugh. "That's the fever talking."

"It's not the fever." Wade's eyes find mine and hold on. "You weren't ever mine, girl. You were never Dottie's. You belong to them."

"To who?" I say, but I already know. Everybody in this valley knows the name Redfern. They own the timber. They own the sheriff. They own the land we're not allowed to cross.

"Burn it," Boone says. "Mercy, burn it right now."

Wade grabs my wrist with more strength than I knew he had left. "Don't let them see you coming. He knows your face. He's always known your"

He stops. His mouth closes tight.

"Who knows my face?" I say. "Dad. Who?"

He shuts his eyes. He doesn't answer. His chest goes up and down, up and down, and that's all I get.

I stand up. My thumb is rubbing the edge of the tag over and over. I didn't tell it to. I make it stop, and a minute later it starts again.

Boone follows me out into the snow. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?"

"Mercy. It's the Harvest Moon feast. Every Redfern wolf in the valley is down at that ranch tonight."

"Good. Then the house is full, and nobody will notice one more."

He steps in front of my truck. "Fine. Then I'm coming."

"No."

"You can't even breathe right. Your ribs are busted."

"I said no." It comes out harder than I mean it to. "This is mine, Boone. Not yours. Not the camp's. Mine."

He looks at me for a long second. Then he steps aside. "If you're not back by sunrise, I'm burning that ranch down."

"Deal."

I drive without headlights for the last mile. I leave the truck in a ditch and go over the boundary fence where the wire is loose. The snow is soft. The ranch house glows on the hill like a cruise ship, and music drifts out of the barn, fiddles and laughing and the clink of glasses. A hundred wolves, all of them belonging somewhere.

I get in through the kitchen. A cook yells at me to grab a tray, so I grab a tray. Nobody looks twice at a girl carrying dirty plates.

The Alpha's study is at the end of the upstairs hall. The door isn't even locked.

Inside it smells like leather and old smoke. There's a big desk and a fireplace and a wall full of pictures. Harlan Redfern shaking hands with the governor. Harlan Redfern holding a fish. Harlan Redfern with his arm around a blonde girl my age in a graduation gown.

His daughter. Lydia.

I start pulling desk drawers. I'm looking for a birth record. A hospital bill. Anything with a date on it.

Then I hear boots on the stairs. Two men, talking low.

There's nowhere to go but the gun closet. I squeeze in between the rifles and pull the slatted door shut. Through the gaps I watch the study door swing open.

Harlan Redfern walks in first. He's tall and gray at the temples, and he has my nose. I didn't know that until right now. A thinner man with a scar on his chin comes in behind him. Gil Tanner, his Beta. Everyone knows Gil.

Harlan pours two glasses of whiskey.

There are eleven boxes of bullets on the shelf beside my face. I count them. Then I count them again. Eleven.

"Wade Hask is dying," Gil says. "Fever. My guy says a week, maybe less."

Harlan hands him a glass. "Good."

"And the girl?"

Harlan drinks. He sets the glass down very carefully, like it might break. "When he goes, the girl goes with him. She stays dead, Gil. Same as I've been paying for."

Gil chuckles. "Dutch was supposed to soften her up tonight."

"Dutch is a fool." Harlan's voice doesn't rise at all. "Next time, use someone who can count to three."

My hand finds the tag in my pocket. My father knew. All my life, he knew exactly where I was.

Gil sets his glass down. He sniffs the air once. Then again.

"Harlan," he says slowly. "You smell that? Smells like rogue."

He turns toward the closet.

The handle starts to turn.