Page 16 of Raised By Wolves

And I’m so surprised that I’m frozen. All that time I spent thinking about how to escape, and the chief just opens the damn door!Is he letting us go?

And are we really going hunting?

“Do we get to go home?” Holo yells.

There’s no answer.

“What now, Kai?” Holo asks softly.

I know we could run. We could sprint through town and vanish into the trees, and that small-town cop would never find us again. But we came here for a reason. And I’m not ready to give up on it yet.

Even though everything’s been awful since we came out of the woods.

Except the grocery store. That was pretty fun.

“We follow him,” I say.

“Are you sure?”

I can read a wild animal a lot easier than I can read a police chief. But I say, “Yes, I’m sure.”

Outside the station, the sun’s shining and the birds are going crazy. In the two days we were in jail,springhas taken over. I hate that I missed it.

Holo sniffs the air and sighs. “Finally I can breathe,” he says.

The chief’s waiting by his cruiser. He opens the back door. “Hop on in.”

I narrow my eyes at him. They’re watering from the brightness. “Where are you going?” I ask.

“We’re going on a hunt for breakfast,” he says.

“You can’t hunt in acar,” Holo points out.

The chief holds up his hands like he’s surrendering. “All right, you got me there,” he says. “I said a hunt, but I really meant a drive.”

“Why would you say a hunt if you didn’t mean it?” my brother asks.

Poor, innocent Holo. He doesn’t understand that people hardly ever mean what they say. Me, I must’ve been born knowing it somehow.

Wolves can maim and kill and steal. But they can’t ever deceive you, because they don’t know how.

“The chief was making a joke,” I say to Holo. “Not that it was funny,” I add.

I give my brother a little shove. “Go on, get in.” When he hesitates, I sigh and go in first, sliding across the hard plastic back seat. I pat the spot next to me, and Holo gives a whimper and climbs in.

It takes less than a minute for the chief to drive us through the town of Kokanee Creek, because it’s only five blocks long. Then we’re on the highway and the car picks up speed.

I grip the door. I hate seeing the world rush by so fast. Holo’s turning green around the edges. Seems he doesn’t like it much, either. Just when I think Holo’s going to barf up whatever’s left of last night’s dinner, the chief pulls into the parking lot of a squat brick building.

“Wendy!” Holo says. “Wendy, Wendy, Wendy.”

The chief grins at him in the rearview mirror. “Considering this might’ve been the first word you ever said in my presence, young man, I thought you might enjoy getting breakfast here at Wendy’s.”

“There’s food inside?” Holo asks.

This seems like a dumb question, but in fairness my brother’s never seen a restaurant before.

“You bet,” says the chief.

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