Chapter 2

The words were barely out of Calder's mouth before dozens of Blackbriar wolves closed in around the car.

The young men who'd been standing still a second ago now had thick fur crawling up their arms, their nails lengthening into claws. Faces pressed against the windows, breath fogging up the glass.

"Reverse! Get us out of here!" Willa screamed at the driver.

The driver was just a regular human. He'd never seen anything like this in his life. His face went white, and he threw the car into reverse, stomping the gas.

The impact hit hard.

My shoulder slammed into the door. I bit back a wince.

Behind us, half-shifted men had already blocked the road with logs.

A wall of bodies in front. A dead end behind.

I glanced down at my phone. No signal. Not even one bar. We were deep enough in the mountains that there wasn't a cell tower for miles.

"Running?" Calder gave a cold laugh and jumped up onto the hood.

He crouched down, looking at me through the windshield from above. The face that used to look so gentle was twisted into something else entirely.

"My people are everywhere for miles around. Who's going to come save you?"

He stood up and drove his fist into the windshield.

Once. Twice.

The whole car shook. Fine cracks spread across the glass.

Willa was shaking with rage. She grabbed the wolf spray from her bag and started rolling down her window to use it.

"Willa, don't open it!"

Too late.

The window was only halfway down when a heavyset old woman shot her hand through the gap, fingers spread, and grabbed a fistful of Willa's hair. She yanked hard, dragging her toward the window.

Willa screamed, half her body pulled out through the opening.

"A human woman thinks she can act up in Blackbriar!"

Willa twisted and managed to get the spray up, hitting the old woman square in the face.

The old woman took it full-on, but all she did was narrow her eyes. Her grip tightened.

Wolves could shrug off things that would drop a human cold. There was no comparison.

A half-shifted man leaned in close, his nose almost touching Willa's neck. He took a long breath in, then looked up and grinned at the crowd.

"This human smells pretty good."

He glanced over at Calder, still on the hood.

"Alpha, can I keep her?"

Calder didn't answer. He just cut his eyes toward the man and let the corner of his mouth curl up.

That was all the man needed.

Another hand reached in and grabbed the strap of Willa's dress.

The crowd let out a low murmur. Someone whistled.

Willa gritted her teeth and drove her knee into the stomach of the man sniffing at her neck.

His grin froze. A second later, his claws raked across her arm.

Fabric tore.

Three deep gashes opened up on Willa's arm, cutting all the way to the bone. Blood welled up and dripped onto the pure white door.

"Willa!" My eyes burned. I shouted through the window. "Let go of her!"

Calder glanced over from the hood, and his mouth actually curved up.

"A human woman wandering onto wolf territory, and she gets a little sniff? What did she think was going to happen?"

My hands were shaking. Not from fear.

I reached into the hidden pocket in my dress and pulled out a silver letter opener, my hand closing around the silver-lined leather grip. I used it for opening documents at work. A silver blade burned wolves on contact.

I lunged toward the window and drove it straight into the back of the old woman's hand, the one still tangled in Willa's hair. No hesitation.

The blade sank into flesh. Skin sizzled where the silver touched it.

"My hand — ah, my hand!"

The old woman shrieked and let go, dropping to the ground and clutching it, writhing.

Every hand that had been reaching for Willa pulled back at once. For one second, everything went still.

Just one second.

I hauled Willa back into the car, rolled the window up, and locked the doors.

"Let me see." I tore a strip off my dress and wrapped it around the gashes on her arm.

Willa was sweating, teeth clenched, shaking her head. "I'm fine... Maren, these people have lost it. Do not get out of this car."

Her face had gone pale. Blood was still soaking through the fabric.

Outside, that second of quiet was over. The old woman's screaming had set the whole pack off.

"She drew blood! Wreck the car! Drag her out here!" Calder's mother was screeching, waving the crowd forward.

Rocks, sticks, claws — they came at the car from every direction.

The body was getting hammered with dents. Cracks spread across the back window. Glass kept splintering, one crack after another.

This car wasn't going to hold much longer.

Calder was still stretched across the hood, his face pressed close to the shattered windshield, eyes locked on mine.

He opened his mouth and mouthed the words slowly, one at a time, meant for me alone.

"You can walk in there on your own two feet, or I can have you carried in. Your choice."