My Brother's Poisoner

t, one arm numb under my ribs, Cillian's hand heavy at my hip. His silver-grey hair had come loose from its tie, and a strand of it lay ac

ing this man, and now I had touched him until my legs gave out and my wolf had howled herself hoarse

as too steady, the way a man breat

awake,"

. He did not open his eyes. "The tide turns in an hou

w the ti

l pays for the information." He said it as a f

ack with my fingers, because I needed my hands doing something besides reaching for him. He watched me do it. His eyes were the color of a storm off the cliffs, that grey

n will have a story ready if he finds us like this,

He sat up too, and the blanket fell away from hi

You threw it ov

of his height. He ducked, found the chair, and shook out his coat, and a p

f Alphas, the ring that means a matter of law and not a matter of courtesy. Then I saw t

OLUT

th wen

under the cot and said nothing. It would have bought me a week, maybe. But my wolf was awake now, sitting up in the back of my skul

lli

he went very still, and the stillness of that man is

it against his thigh with one hand, the way a man does

ped this,

ee t

he Council sent y

rry." He looked at the paper, then at

an? The court? A room with a lock on it a

It has always been a good jaw, and I

all neat and bloodless. The Carraig pack, having failed to sustain its viability for a period of three years and more, having produced no viable Luna bond, is

llian, appointe

my name to the report at the end, after the

who reads it ou

es

takes the Alpha's t

ng goes again

have knocked on the pack house door like an hones

ettled and hissed. He picked up his boots and sat on the chair to pull t

hy I came to the hu

ure I want

against the grey light coming through the shutter was the shape of my entire youth. "The bond was dead. I have lived twenty years with it dead in my chest. I walk

elping. She was leaning against the

file says you broke it clean. That is what my superiors

d in my own voice, and I did not care. "The Counc

s coat and pulled the hood up over that silver hair, and the

your brother present. There is a hearing, and ther

t da

bringing rain and the smell of the sea, and under it, faint, the smel

your pack is alive, Bríd, or I sign the report an

e door. The

elt it when I came up the path, like a tooth gone hollow. If you have not been t

the grey morning, his boots finding the wet stones without looking, and my wolf howled once inside me, long and low and