Chapter 17. The White Rag

June's POV

"You don't have to go," Ronan said.

We stood at the south gate in the cold, with the floodlights buzzing and the whole Reach black beyond the fence. Garrick was gassing up the pickup and two ATVs. Ewan and Wade were pulling on boots.

"I know," I said.

"I mean it. He's not owed a conversation. He's not owed anything."

Garrick's scouts had come back up the slope ten minutes ago with the rest of it. Rhett Calloway. Alone. A white rag on a stick. A hand he could barely hold up.

"I know that too." I pulled Osric's daughter's boots tighter. "But he came alone, with a white rag, in an old truck he can barely drive one-handed. Five days ago, his father tried to drown Edda to get me back. Tonight, the son crawls out into rogue land and asks for me by name."

Ronan was quiet.

"Something changed," I said. "I want to know what."