The Cage Beneath the Store

n around it had healed white and smooth, and the crescent itself had faded to

you get tha

ead when I found him. The fire took most of the house, but his room was at the back, and the

was

his cup. "I found a ledger in the room with two names in it. A

t na

hat were you doing in t

you. I w

lone in Boise." He set the cup down. "And a rogue in a boarding house had your na

d the silver bullet. The wind came down off the mountain and pushed

oarding house. I have never been in a room with a man who had a brand on his wrist, and if

range, because for three days now every wolf in Cobalt Ridge had looked at my boots and

he truth," he said.

ng you wha

what they were doing. One cut, clean, no struggle. Whoever did it left the ledger and the brand and walked away. I've been trying to find ou

Alpha," I said. "I have a grudge ag

he man who took

not the man I'

s hand on the door. H

re people here who would take it to him before the night is out.

on't te

face he had worn all evening, but his eyes had gone some

t happened in the pass for three years, and you didn't take it to the Alpha. I know you've got a brand on your wrist that you ke

a mine shaft behind the pack house. The old one, the

now

away f

hy

door behind the pack house that doesn't open, and there's a wolf at the tree line that won't go away, and a Luna who wears a ring that isn't hers, and a Beta who can't look at you without thinking about a dead rogue in a

show me somethin

nged m

hy

not going to l

ath the tiredness that I had not seen in three years in any wolf's face. It was the look of a

"I'm not goi

r, and I was alone in the yard with the wind and t

corner of the st

il and the black shapes of the pines. It was big, bigger than any wolf I had seen in the c

move. Neit

listening, and I heard, faint and far away, through the mind-link I ha

oor behind the house

h went o

in the yard with my heart going hard in my chest and Mabel's words in my head, and t

t. Coun