Page 54 of Howling Night

I shook my head. “What are his terms?”

“I have to step down as pack leader.”

The words hit me like a slap across the face. “What? No, that’s?—”

“It’s his price,” Ryder said. “He wants the territory and the pack. Has for years. This is his leverage.”

“You can’t do that,” I said, my voice rising. “The price is too high, Ryder. That’s your family, your life, your?—”

“It’s you or the pack,” he said simply. “I can’t just let an innocent person die because she accidentally saw something she shouldn’t have.”

I shook my head, struggling to process what he was telling me. “That’s not fair. That’s not right. He can’t make you do that.”

“I have three days to agree, but I’ve already made my decision,” Ryder said, running his hands through his hair. “It doesn’t even feel like I have a choice. I can’t let anything happen to you, Everly. It was so weird.”

“What was weird?”

He looked toward the window. “Tonight… I felt so strongly that you were in danger. I’d never felt anything like that before. It was like… something inside me just grabbing my insides. Then when you didn’t answer?—”

“I was in danger,” I said, hugging myself. “But Kellan?—”

“Kellan did what?” Ryder said, getting to his feet. His hands were balled up into fists so tight his fingers were white. “That fucking bastard! I knew it was another lie!”

I shook my head. “No, Kellan saved me.”

Ryder froze in place. He didn’t blink. “What happened, Everly?”

Before I could explain what happened, a bright orange glow suddenly illuminated the windows at the front of my house. The flickering light cast eerie shadows across the living room.

I sucked in a breath. “What is that?”

ChapterTwenty-Five

Ryder made it to the window in two steps, and I followed close behind, holding my robe tight to my chest. I pulled the curtain to the side and gasped.

The neighbor’s house was engulfed in flames. Orange and yellow fingers reaching toward the night sky, devouring the structure like a hungry beast. Smoke billowed upward, thick and black against the darkness, making a large cloud overhead.

“What the hell happened?” Ryder asked, turning to face me, his face half-illuminated by the fire’s glow.

I took a step back from the window. “A woman… she attacked me. I heard someone calling for help and I went?—”

“You what?”

“I’m not going to stand around and let someone die!”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re actually terrible at pretending you don’t see things?”

I waved a hand in the air, brushing away his words. “A woman killed my neighbor. She said it was her father… and that he made her the way she was or something. I thought she was going to let me go, but then she didn’t.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ryder said, pacing at the window, running his hands so aggressively through his hair I thought he was pulling it out. “You could have been killed!”

“There was blood everywhere once Kellan and his pack got inside,” I said, wincing as I swallowed. “Kellan showed up just in time. He saved my life. He and the other wolves killed the woman. He said they tracked her.”

“She was the one killing wolves in our territories,” Ryder said, as if he were making sense of everything.

I nodded. “That’s what he said, but she wasn’t… normal. There was something wrong with her. She threw one of the wolves across the room as if it weighed nothing. Her teeth?—”

The distant wail of sirens broke my train of thought.

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