Chapter 14. Before Moonrise

June's POV

There is no darkness like the Reach in the hours before a late moon rises.

The moon was five nights past full. It wouldn't clear the ridge until near midnight, and thick cloud had swallowed the stars. The trees were black shapes against a sky only a little less black. I could barely see my own hand.

Ronan could see better. All wolves can. But tonight, I realized, he was blind in a way I'd never been.

"I can't smell the road," he murmured. We were flat on our stomachs on the ridge above the quarry road, in wet bracken, with Garrick on his other side and Ewan beyond him. "I can smell you. I can smell Garrick's terrible boots. I can smell the stream. I can't smell anything down there that I'm supposed to be looking for."

"That's the point of greyroot," I whispered.

"I know. I just never had to lie here and feel it."

Below us, the quarry road curved