Chapter 2 The Black Wolf

Mercy POV

The closet door opens two inches. I see Gil's fingers on the edge, yellow from cigarettes.

Then a girl's voice cuts across the room like a bell.

"Daddy! Mom's been looking everywhere. They want your toast before the band quits."

Gil's fingers stop.

"In a minute, Lyddie," Harlan says.

"Not in a minute. Now. The governor's wife is already asking for her coat." Heels click across the floor. "What are you two doing in here, anyway? Gil, why are you sniffing Daddy's guns?"

"I smell rogue," Gil says.

"You always smell rogue." She laughs, high and bright. "You said that about Mom's lawyer. Move. If you get dog hair on the Winchester again, he'll make you clean it with your tongue."

Gil's hand drops away. Hers takes its place.

The door swings wide open, and Lydia Redfern is standing right in front of me.

She's shorter than in the photo. Her dress is the color of cream, and there's a tiny cut on her thumb, wrapped in a bandage. Her eyes go big. Then they go from my face to my pocket, where the corner of the yellow tag is sticking out.

I don't move. I don't even blink.

Lydia looks at me for one long second. Something passes across her face, too fast to catch.

Then she shuts the door.

"Nothing in here, Daddy," she calls. "Just your rifles and about a hundred years of dust."

"Told you," Harlan says. "Gil, you're getting old."

"I know what I smelled."

"And I know what my speech says, and it says I'm late." Glasses clink. Feet move. "Lydia. Come."

"Right behind you."

Their voices fade down the hall. I count to ten. Then I count to ten again, because I don't trust the first ten.

Why did she do that?

I push out of the closet. The window is old and stiff, and I have to hit the frame with my palm to get it up. My ribs scream. The cold air slaps me in the face. Below is a porch roof, then a snowbank, then the dark.

I go.

I land on the roof and slide. I hit the snowbank hard and lie there with my mouth open, trying to remember how air works. Up at the barn, a fiddle starts a fast song.

Then, behind the music, a howl.

It's Gil. I'd know it anywhere now.

Two more howls answer him, close. Too close.

I run.

The pines come at me in the dark. Branches whip my face. Snow drags at my boots. My ribs feel like someone is stabbing me with a fork every time I breathe, so I stop breathing deep and run on little sips of air instead. Behind me I can hear them, paws thudding, one of them panting with a whine in it.

The fence. I can see the fence. Fifty yards. Thirty.

Dottie used to race me to the creek when I was small. She always let me win, then pretended she didn't. "You've got rabbit feet, Merce," she'd say. "Nobody's ever going to catch you."

Twenty yards.

Something hits me from the side like a truck.

I fly. I land on my back in the snow, and all the sips of air I saved go out of me at once. A weight comes down on my chest, heavy and warm. Teeth flash above my face, white as the snow.

It's a wolf. But it's wrong. It's huge, bigger than any wolf I've ever seen, black from nose to tail, and its eyes are not yellow like a pack wolf's. They're gold, with silver in them, like coins at the bottom of a pond.

I punch it in the throat.

It doesn't even flinch. It just looks at me.

Then the fur pulls back like water off a rock, and the wolf is a man.

He pins both my wrists to the snow with one hand. He's older than me, not by much. Dark hair, a hard mouth, a face that looks like nobody has ever told it no.

His skin touches mine.

It's like grabbing a live wire. A hum shoots up my arms and into my chest and settles somewhere under my ribs, right where the pain is, and for one second the pain just stops. I can't feel the cold. I can't feel anything but his hand.

He feels it too. I see it. His grip goes loose, then tight again, like he's not sure which one he means.

"What are you?" he says. His voice is low and scraped raw.

"Get off me."

"Answer me."

"I'm the girl who's going to bite your nose off if you don't get off me."

He doesn't move. He leans closer instead, and he breathes in, slow, right at my neck. I should knee him. I could. Instead I tip my chin up, just a little, like I'm letting him. I didn't decide to do that. I put it back down.

"You smell like Redfern pine," he says. "And smoke. And blood." His eyes drop to my side. "You're hurt."

"I'm fine."

"Your ribs are broken."

"Cracked. There's a difference."

Something almost like a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, then dies. His free hand lifts toward my face, toward the burn on my cheek from Dutch's rings. It stops halfway. It goes back down to the snow.

"Who's chasing you?" he asks.

"Nobody."

"Three wolves and a Beta's howl is nobody?"

"Nobody you need to worry about."

"Tell me your name," he says, "and I'll walk you past them myself. No one in this valley would touch you with me beside you."

It's the softest thing anyone has said to me all night. All year, maybe. And I want it. I want it so badly that my mouth starts to open.

"No," I say.

He stares at me. "No?"

"I don't need you to walk me anywhere. I don't need anybody to walk me anywhere."

Boots crash through the trees. Flashlights swing across the snow. Not Redfern wolves. Men in black coats, moving like soldiers.

"Sir!" one of them calls. "Sir, we heard Redfern howls. Is there a rogue out here?"

The man above me doesn't look away from my face.

Then he stands up in one smooth move and turns his back to me. He puts his whole body between me and the lights. He's wearing nothing but the night, and he doesn't seem to care.

"The woods are empty," he says.

"But sir, the Redferns said—"

"I said the woods are empty, Hollis. Go back to the road. Tell the Redfern dogs to go back to their party."

The flashlights stop. Then, slowly, they turn and move away.

He doesn't look at me when he speaks again. "Go. Before I change my mind."

I get up. My legs are shaking, and I hate them for it. I go through the loose wire of the fence, and I don't look back. I go the long way, up the ridge, because if I'm not going to let anyone help me, then I'll have to stay off the road.

I can still feel his hand on my wrists. Like a bracelet I can't take off.

At the top of the ridge, I stop to breathe and look down into the valley.

The highway is full of lights.

Black trucks. Dozens of them, maybe forty, rolling slow and steady toward Hamilton like a funeral. Every single one is flying the same flag. A silver crown on black.

Every wolf in North America knows that flag.

The Lycan King has come to the Bitterroot.

And the man in the woods had gold and silver eyes, the eyes no pack wolf has. The eyes only one bloodline in the world is born with.

I just punched a king in the throat.