Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,19

his duty to keep the pack secure.”

And somehow she sensed that they were no longer talking about her or Cordelia. His jaw was clenched, his chin raised. She traced his sharp profile with her gaze. The tension in the truck was nearly unbearable.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

“Don’t ever cross him, Kat. I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.”

“Too?” she whispered, barely remembering to breathe.

He hunched his shoulders. “When it was clear what was starting to happen to Uncle Lee . . . my father . . . my father went to have a talk with him.”

She felt her heart skip a beat. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying two men walked into those woods and only one walked out.”

“You don’t think . . . I thought your dad was killed in a hunting accident.”

“That’s what Lee tells everyone. I have my reasons to think differently.”

“Justin,” she breathed, “I’m so sorry. And now you have to live with him. How can you even stand to look at him?”

“He’s my alpha . . . for now.”

And those last two words hung in the air between them, and Katelyn knew in her heart that one day Justin was planning on making a challenge.

“You called me your secret weapon,” she whispered.

“No one can know about your immunity,” he said. “No one.”

I bet I’d be Mr. Fenner’s favorite if he knew I was immune to silver, she thought, but she just nodded as the truck slipped into the dark woods; as, in the blackness, the world disappeared.

Click. Click. Click.

Nails on wood.

Nails on glass.

And leering down at her.

Eyes.

Burning eyes.

Watching from above.

What big eyes you have.

The better to see you with.

Click. Click. Click.

Nails on the floor.

Hot breath whispering on her cheek.

Sleep, beast of silver.

Katelyn’s new tires came in, and her grandfather put them on her Subaru, which meant that Trick didn’t need to drive her to school anymore. Seeing her riding with Justin had obviously pissed Trick off, but he couldn’t quite keep his distance; Katelyn told herself it didn’t matter what he thought of her, but it did.

Driving through the woods alone, though, she couldn’t help but think of running through them as something called her name. She kept the car doors locked and seriously rethought her grandfather’s offer of a gun. Would regular bullets work on a werewolf or a Hellhound, or would only silver bullets work?

She and Cordelia had researched the Hellhound when they had begun their history class report on the lost Madre Vena silver mine. According to legend, the Hellhound guarded the rich cache of ore and silver treasure deep inside the mine. Cordelia’s father had been pushing her to find the Madre Vena, and Katelyn wondered if she had done so. After all, she had lied to Katelyn about having one of the books they’d been looking for. All that time hunting for it, and Cordelia had kept it hidden in her room all along. Maybe that was why Cordelia had been so certain that the Hellhound was real. Maybe she’d seen it.

Katelyn wanted that book. She wanted to know why Cordelia had lied to her.

And if the Hellhound’s real, I want to know how to steer clear of it.

She didn’t want to be its third victim. Whispers had gone around school that Haley and Becky had died horribly. Apparently Sergeant Lewis had said he’d never seen anything like it and the morgue technician had thrown up when he’d seen Becky’s mangled body.

She thought again about just bailing. And then, as usual, her resolve crumbled when she imagined being hunted down. They might do something to her grandfather or Trick in retaliation. She didn’t know if she was being a coward, or a hero, or a realist. At night, lying on her bed, she stared at the statue of her mother in the moonlight, and wondered what it felt like to completely give up. Her mom would never have given up.

But she wasn’t sure where the line was drawn between giving up and giving in.

~

On Wednesday morning, her grandfather looked at her across the breakfast table with a strange look on his face. He took a sip of coffee and tapped the table idly with his fingertips. “You okay?” he asked.

She sat up straighter and pasted on a smile. “Yeah, fine. You?”

“Same.”

But she looked at him more closely and realized that he seemed tired, more so than she’d ever noticed before. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

He paused while he sipped his cup of coffee. “The break-in is still bothering me,”