Bound to Enemy Alpha

led of wet moss and iron, and under that, fain

take the air. She came forward without my asking, ears flat, nose working

hind the hawthorn. "You stop at th

oat it made my hands shake. My skin went tight. I felt the shift start somewhere under my ribs, the push of bone against

t from the drizzle, and put her hand on m

came out rough.

er rifle slung low on her back. She was lean as a whip and had taught me to read gr

was in the moss now, in the stone, in my own wrists. My wolf turn

smelled before," I s

e of pines on the ridge. "Blackpine pays for the spring'

e and pulled my braid free of my collar. "I go in tonight. You said

ays is

" I picked up my pack. "I will be in and out before t

died a track: for the thing tha

m co

liar for a girl

essed something into my hand, a stub of chalk she used to mark trail trees

a branch under a heavy foot. I kept to the deer paths and marked my turns with Tilda's chalk on the north side of the trunks where

it, grey and low and built of the same granite as the hill, the Kielder pack house. Smoke f

the far cliff, a line of silver in the grass that c

sp

ift in any wolf who drank it, water that healed in hours what should take days

of the ridge and dropped it. It roll

I had hea

from his forehead, and the second was his eyes, which were blue-grey and entirely calm. He was tall and built like someone who ran up hills for pleasure

ve been stupid, and I had promised myself years ago t

said. "I did

low and clipped, the voice of a man who was

your land. That is a diff

n the mud, then at the marks on my tre

ee

ack to the Blackpine border." He said it without he

the one that had got me out of three pack prisons and one marriage offer. "I am a visiting tracker

g about the n

Alpha, since nobody else would dare to s

ickled all over with the beginning of a shift. I dug my nails into my palm until it stopped. He tilted his head, a

l the

wise in my own forest." His jaw tightened. "Which is a problem, beca

to answer and fo

, the way wolves do when they hear something the rest of us have not caught yet. Then I hear

es, and for a moment he was not an Alpha at al

truth there," he said. "Or you will run, and I will catch you b

already walking down the slope be

aid. "How did you know I

Nessa in any pack on this border. And because yo

nd the wolves howled again, and the silver lin