All Chapters of Bring Him to His Knees: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter OneThe Gathering Hall smells like cedar smoke and too many wolves in one room.I stand at the back of it while Del pins the last of my hair into place. Her hands shake. Mine don’t, and that feels wrong somehow, like the fear has gotten confused about which one of us it belongs to.“Stop fidgeting,” Del says, though I haven’t moved.“I’m not.”“You’re breathing like you’re about to run a race.”“I’m fine.”She meets my eyes in the mirror and doesn’t believe me. I don’t blame her. I don’t believe me either.She sets the last pin and steps back to look at me properly. Whatever she sees makes her face do something complicated.“You look like you’re going to your own funeral.”“Thanks.”“I mean it as a compliment. Very dramatic. Very moody bride.”I almost laugh. Then someone knocks on the door and says it’s time, and I stop almost laughing and start walking instead, even when a primal part of me whispers to me that something is wrong.The hall is full when I reach the doors. Ever

Chapter ThreeSLOANEThe second car comes out of nowhere.One second the old man is gripping my wrist, mouth open around whatever he’s about to tell me, and the next there’s a horn blaring and headlights swallowing the whole road and a sound I will hear in my sleep for months afterward, metal and bone in the same instant, wrong in a way that doesn’t belong to either one alone.He’s thrown sideways off the road into the ditch grass.The car that hit him doesn’t stop. Taillights flare once, twice, and then it’s gone around the bend like it was never there at all, gravel spitting from the tires.For a second nobody moves. Not me. Not the driver, still gripping the wheel with both hands like she hasn’t caught up to what just happened in front of her own headlights.“Oh my god.” Her voice comes out cracked in half. “Oh my god, oh my god—”“Move the car.” I’m already out the door, already running toward the ditch before I’ve decided to. “Pull it onto the shoulder, put the hazards on, go—”“

Chapter FourROANI don’t sleep. I don’t try.I sit in the dark of my study with the lights off and my phone on the desk in front of me, waiting for Marcus to call, and the pressure under my ribs gets worse with every minute he doesn’t.It’s past two when it finally rings.“Talk to me.”“I found the car.” Marcus’s voice is careful in a way I don’t like. Marcus is rarely careful. “Ran off the road near the county line, like the runner said. No driver at the scene — looks like whoever was in it kept going, or got pulled somewhere else.”“Whose car?.”A pause that lasts too long.“Marcus.”“Registered to a woman named Rhea Doyle. Lives out past the ridge. I went to her place to ask some questions.”“And?”“And Sloane was there.”The pressure under my ribs turns into something sharper, fast enough that I have to set the phone down for a second and press the heel of my hand flat against my own chest like that’s going to do anything at all.“Is she hurt?”“Didn’t look like it. Scared, maybe

ROAN — Two Years LaterThe granary is half empty by midwinter, which never used to happen. I stand in the doorway counting sacks that aren't there and doing the math on how far what's left will stretch, and the number I land on isn't good enough for anyone in this pack to hear out loud."We lost two more families to the eastern packs last week," Marcus says beside me, keeping his voice low even though there's no one else in the granary to hear it. "They left Quietly. No formal transfer request, no goodbye. They just disappeared.""Can you blame them?""No," he says. "That's what worries me."Patrol numbers are down by a third from where they stood two years ago. Half of what's left are younger than they should be for the work, because the older, harder wolves either died holding a border that shouldn't have needed holding, or left for packs that could still promise them a full stomach and a future. I've stopped pretending the numbers will turn around on their own.My own body isn't do

SLOANEThe old mill sits at the border between our territories, neutral ground by old tradition, the kind of place packs have met on for longer than either pack currently standing has existed. I haven’t been out this way in two years. It looks smaller than I remember, and colder, though that might just be the morning.Del drives slower than usual, eyes flicking to the tree line every time we pass a bend, ever since the scout’s warning about blood at the crossing three miles back. We found nothing when we stopped to look. That doesn’t make either of us relax.Kieran rides in the back beside me, one hand resting near the blade at his hip the entire way, quiet in the particular way he gets when he’s decided his job right now is just to be present, not useful, though today, present comes with an edge to it it didn’t have yesterday.“You don’t have to talk,” Del says, catching my eye in the mirror. “Just be exactly what they’re expecting. Cold, controlled, unreadable. You’ve been that wom