Chapter 2

The duel had blunted her nails that, last night, had looked sharp enough to gouge out an eye, but somehow hadn’t chipped her burgundy polish. Or had it? As I squinted at her fingers, she released her son’s wrist and curled them into her palm. “This goes both ways, though, Kolane. If any harm comes to my son or to Aidan before the duel, the choice of time and date reverts back to us.” A warm breeze blew tendrils of my blonde hair into my eyes. I wrenched the strands back, but they escaped a moment later. “Alex and Aidan are living on borrowed time, so you have no right to make demands.” “Ness is right,” Liam said. “You’re lucky they’re even alive, and that we’ve returned Alex.” A crooked smile touched her blood-stained lips. “Careful, Kolane,” she said, taking a step closer to Liam, “you’re grossly outnumbered.” The Creek pack had swelled by a hundred today, making my pack, with its forty wolves, an even tinier blip on the shifter map. “Is that a threat?” Liam growled. “It’s a warning.” “I thought you came in peace,” I said. “We offered peace,” she snapped. “Your Alpha turned it down.” My jaw set tight. She was right. She had offered, but Liam insisted on dueling her. “My request that you not harm my son or my cousin is far from outrageous.” “They won’t be killed,” Liam said after a beat. “Satisfied?” “Or tortured,” she added. Liam crossed his arms. As she waited for Liam’s answer, Morgan’s eyes became incandescent, as though her wolf were fighting to surge out. “My people will stay away from them,” Liam finally relented. Her eyes lost their inhuman glow. “Good. Do you have any more demands, Kolane?” Should I ask her to take her pack and leave Boulder until the duel? Liam’s voice tickled my mind. Since I couldn’t communicate the same way my Alpha could, I shook my head. As much as I didn’t want Creeks wandering our woods, I also didn’t want to banish my best friend and her family from their hometown. I couldn’t do that to Sarah. She might be a Creek now that her uncle had been defeated, but at heart, she’d always be a Pine. Besides, there was a reason the saying keep your friends close and your enemies closer had endured through the ages. We’d have an easier time of finding out how Cassandra had cheated by observing her and her pack. “We have no further demands,” Liam finally announced. “Then it’s settled.” Morgan started to lift her hand, probably to shake on their deal. “Who will you choose as your Second, Mrs. Morgan?” Cassandra’s hand halted in midair. I still had trouble reconciling that this woman was the same one who’d set me up on dates through a fake escort agency. The same way I had trouble coming to terms that my cousin had allied himself with her and pinned Liam’s father’s murder on me. “I was gonna pick my daughter Lori . . .” The thin woman, who bore the same narrow facial structure as Cassandra, seemed to stand a little taller. “But I’m tempted to go with one of my new wolves.” The Creek Alpha raised her gaze to the deck where Sarah stood, her straightened blonde hair gusting around her taut shoulders. As much as I wanted to spare Sarah the perils of being involved in a duel, if she became Cassandra’s Second— “Better not pick me,” my friend yelled. “I’d let them kill you.” Hand coming back down to her side, Cassandra grinned. “Dear Miss Matz, I don’t believe you’d let them kill me. I believe you’d do it yourself.” “You’re right. I would.” Liam’s best friend loomed closer to Sarah. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Lucas, who’d always abhorred the pack that shared our land, had decided Sarah wasn’t hateful, or at least, not as hateful as non-Boulders. “Are there any volunteers who’d care to duel at my side?” Was this her way of testing her new wolves’ allegiance? For a long moment, no one spoke. But then, a voice I despised more than the Creek Alpha’s rang across the blue summer air. “I’ll do it, Alpha Morgan.” Justin Summix stepped away from his two buddies, his white wifebeater and the skin around his nostrils still speckled with blood from the beating August had delivered after the creep insulted me. As he approached, Cassandra sized him up. “And you are?” And here I thought she’d done her homework on all foreign packs . . . Justin Summix must not have been of much interest to her. He was a petty and vile shifter who’d insinuated more than once that being the pack’s only “bitch”—however biologically correct, I hated the term—meant I was a Boulder slut. He’d touted this barely an hour ago when I strolled up to the inn in August’s company. “Justin Summix, ma’am.” He palmed his brown scruff that was the same length and shade as his buzzed hair. Her gaze halted on the blood splatter before rising to his pulsing nostrils. “Why do you want to duel at my side, Justin?”