Chapter 9

Neve

All the way up the stairs, I brace for the explosion.

I talked back to Brianna in front of half the pack. I humiliated one of her friends. I told the alpha to show me to my cell like he was a bellhop. In Silvercrest, any one of those would have cost me a week of my life, and I’ve been bracing for the bill since the moment the door shut behind us.

Nothing happens.

Dominic walks beside me in silence, his hand gone from my arm now, and I keep my eyes straight ahead so I don’t have to see his face. The stairs creak in the same places they always did. The third step. The seventh. I used to skip them when I snuck up here as a kid to steal cookies from the kitchen pantry. I don’t skip them now. I don’t care who hears me.

I think about Blake instead.

I wouldn’t have known him on the street. The boy I remember kept his hair buzzed short every summer because it was too hot, and he complained for a week when Ray made him wear long sleeves to a fu