Chapter 6

Two nights before I leave for Ravencroft territory, I go to pack my mother's grass wolf.

The shelf above my bed is empty.

For a second the floor tilts. I check under the bed. I check the dresser. I check every drawer, every shelf, every coat pocket I own.

It's gone.

There's exactly one other wolf in this pack house who knows where I kept it.

I find her in the small parlor next to the kitchens. She has the grass wolf in her lap. She's pulling it apart.

Strand by strand. Slow. Methodical. Like she's deveining a fish.

"*Mira.*"

Her hand jerks. The whole wolf comes apart in her fingers — ear, tail, body, all of it, fifteen years of careful weaving falling into her skirt as dry brown grass.

She looks up at me with huge wet eyes and the cheekbone I "slapped" yesterday already purpling for the show.

"Sister — I'm sorry — I was going to surprise Caden, I was going to weave him a little charm to wear at my ceremony, I just wanted to study how my mother — *your* mother — used to —"

I draw the knife.

Not a real blade. A training knife. No silver edge, no proper point — they don't let us carry live silver inside the pack house. But I'm three days off training and my hand is steady and the look in her eyes when she sees the blade is so satisfying I could weep.

I take one step toward her.

Her foot moves.

She steps forward — *toward* the knife, not away — and crushes the loose grass into the floor with the toe of her shoe. Grinds it in like she's putting out a cigarette.

What's left of the grass wolf is a smear of green and brown on the stone.

I stop breathing.

I take another step. The training blade is at her throat.

A wrist clamps around mine from behind.

"Rae — *what are you doing* —"

Caden.

He twists my arm down and out. The training blade clatters somewhere I can't see. Mira sags backward into a chair, all tears now, the act so practiced it would be funny if I wasn't shaking.

I turn my head to look at him.

"Did you give it to her?"

He doesn't answer.

"That charm was kept on the shelf above my bed. Nobody knows that except you, Caden. So I'll ask again. *Did you give it to her?*"

His silence is the answer.

I laugh. It comes out wrong.

"Tell me something. Is anything I own worth as much to you as her *mood*?"

He flinches.

He actually flinches.

Then his eyes land on Mira, on her tear-soaked face, on the bruise that I didn't put there, and his jaw locks again.

"Because of you," he says, low, "she might die in three days. And you're going to put a blade through her over a *fistful of grass?*"

"A fistful of grass."

I say it back to him slow. So he can hear it.

"Caden. You *know* what my mother left me. You *know*."

He goes very still.

For one second I see it crack open behind his eyes — the pup in the corridor of my mother's house, twelve years old, watching her weave that wolf for me at the kitchen table. The pup who'd cried into her apron when he got his first shift wrong. The Beta heir who'd taught me how to pin a wolf twice my size on the training field.

Then he looks at Mira again, and the door behind his eyes slams shut.

"I'll weave you a better one."

I stare at him.

"I don't want anything from you."

I drive my shoulder into his ribs and break for Mira.

He's faster — gods, he's always been faster — and this time he draws his sidearm. Real one. From his hip.

Points the barrel at my chest.

"You're acting against pack order. As Beta heir I have the authority to bring you in right now."

I freeze for half a second.

Then I laugh, because I have nothing else.

I draw my training blade out of my belt — useless, blunt, no edge — and I point it back at him.

We stand there in the parlor like the eight years that never happened.

"Stop it, Raelynn —"

I take a step forward.

Caden's eyes go wide. His arm jerks — instinct, training, he's trying to swing the barrel away from me — and his finger slips.

*Crack.*

The shot grazes across the top of my shoulder. Cloth shreds. Heat blooms. Blood runs hot down my arm in a thin clean line.

The whole room stops.

Mira screams. Caden's gun hits the floor.

He's looking at me like he doesn't understand what just happened. Then his eyes drop to the training blade in my hand. The dull edge. The blunted tip.

"You — you weren't going to —"

His voice cracks.

"You weren't even going to *cut* her. Why didn't you draw your real weapon? Why didn't you —"

He stops.

Something opens inside his face. Something he didn't know was there.

*Why was I so sure you'd reach for a real blade. Why was I so sure you'd kill her. Why have I been treating you like a rabid wolf for fifteen years.*

I sway on my feet.

The pain is catching up. The grass under Mira's shoe is catching up. My mother's last gift in fifteen years catching up.

Caden moves. He's across the room and pulling me against his chest before I can swat him off. His hand is at my shoulder, shaking, pressing down on the wound.

I don't fight him.

I'm too tired.

The tears I've been swallowing for two lives finally roll down my face and land on the back of his hand.

He makes a small broken sound against the top of my head.

I let my eyes close.