The Pack Calls Him Killer

dy, on the step outside, a quick hard press of his mouth that I blamed on the cold. Now he was not quick about it. His fingers spread against the small of my back and d

iver of mud, and Callum had come in from the deer check soaked through and shivering, and I had given him the place nearest the fire be

y skin like warmth coming back into a numb hand. My wolf rolled over once in my chest, lazy and pleased, and I let her. His mout

o stop?" he asked

want you to be qu

I had thought about this more than I ever meant to, on the long walks up the hill, in the dark of the gamekeeper's cottage with Mairi asleep in the next room. Now it was

g from it when the c

oor, and his eyes, green as wet moss, had gone wo

somewhere ahead. I will not describe the shift. Anyone who has felt it knows it, and anyone who has not would think me mad. My wolf is a good size and her coat is the

head bare and his jaw set. Alpha Douglas, who was never anything but Alpha, even standing at his own mate's burial with his hands shaking at his sides. Mhairi was in the ground already, wrapped in the

e, touching each of us on the brow. Silver hair, silver eyes, hands like a bird

ame to me

for a long moment, and her mouth did something I did not like. "You will

. "You are confusing me wit

o not care w

es over and over. The wind came down the hill and the torches guttered. Douglas put his hand on the top stone, the one w

when I

dark to put her mouth to my ear. I had heard her before. Twice, maybe three times

ou is not what yo

because a gamekeeper learns to keep her face still when the stag bolts and the

shoulder, his auburn hair still wet from the bothy, his hands loose at his si

mething?" Callu

" I

me the way a hawk watches a hen it has not decided about yet, and I understood then that she kne

hought at her, as hard as I could. "If tha

ne breath and the next, the voice came again, softer, and this time it wa

said. "Go home before

e cairn and promised the old Luna's spirit that the pack would have answers. The words were good. The hand was good. I stood

white as the moon," he sa

ng hap

is your ha

eve and made my voice steady. "The rites," I s

before it moves. And behind him, on the far side of the cairn, Rabbie had stopped smiling and was looking at me across

ome away from here," he

name, and I heard the dead woman's voice telling me to go home. And because I could not think of a