# Chapter 10: The Silver Girl

Kael hit me before I could even scream.

Not hard. He just grabbed me around the waist and threw us both to the ground behind the blue truck. I landed on top of him in the cold, wet grass. His arms were tight around me.

*THUNK.*

A second arrow hit the side of the truck, right where my head had been.

"Stay down," Kael breathed in my ear. "Don't move. Don't even breathe."

I couldn't have moved if I wanted to. My whole body was shaking. My cheek was pressed against his chest, and I could hear his heart pounding fast and hard.

"Who is it?" I whispered. "Who's shooting at us?"

"I don't know." He lifted his head, very slowly, and looked over the hood of the truck at the lake. His eyes were glowing silver-gray now. "I can't smell him. Whoever it is, he's covered his scent."

Then the mist on the water began to move.

Shapes came out of it. Dark shapes, moving low and fast across the shallow water near the shore. One, two, three, four, five. Wolves. Thin, ugly wolves with patchy fur and yellow eyes.

Rogues.

They had been hiding in the mist the whole time. Waiting.

"Kael," I whispered. "Kael, there are *five* of them."

"I see them."

He rolled me gently off him and pushed me down against the truck's back tire.

"Listen to me," he said. His voice was calm and hard, the voice of an Alpha. "Get in the truck. Lock the doors. The keys are in it. If I tell you to drive, you drive. You don't wait for me. Do you understand?"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"*Sienna.*"

"No!"

He took my face in both his hands. He looked into my eyes for one second. Just one.

"Please," he said.

Then he stood up, and he changed.

It happened so fast. One moment he was a man, and the next moment his clothes ripped apart and his bones cracked and twisted, and a huge black wolf was standing where he had been. He was bigger than the rogues. Much bigger. His fur was black as night, and his gray eyes were burning.

He threw back his head and howled.

It was the loudest, deepest sound I had ever heard. It shook the ground. It shook the trees. It shook my bones. Somewhere far away in the forest, other wolves answered him.

His pack. He was calling his pack.

Then he turned and ran straight at the five rogues.

---

I should have gotten in the truck. I know I should have.

But I couldn't stop watching.

Kael hit the first rogue so hard it flew backward into the lake with a huge splash. He spun around and caught the second one by the back of its neck and threw it into a tree. The rogues snarled and circled him, snapping and biting, and he fought them all at once, like a black storm.

But there were too many. One bit his back leg. Another jumped on his shoulder, the same shoulder I had stitched four nights ago. I saw the bandage tear. I saw fresh red blood on his black fur.

"Kael!" I screamed.

Then, from the trees behind me, two more wolves came running. They were smaller and lighter, one brown and one sandy gold. They had Blackthorn Ridge Guard collars on their necks.

Help. Help was here.

The brown wolf ran straight into the fight beside Kael. The sandy gold one was younger, I could tell. He was smaller and his legs were long and clumsy, like a puppy who hadn't grown into his paws yet. He ran in fast and brave and stupid.

And a rogue knocked him down.

The young wolf yelped and rolled across the grass. The rogue jumped on top of him, pinning him to the ground near the edge of the water. The young wolf was kicking and crying, but he couldn't get up. The rogue opened its jaws wide, right above his throat.

Kael was fighting three rogues at once. He couldn't reach him. Nobody could reach him.

Nobody except me.

I didn't think. I just moved.

I pulled open the truck door and grabbed the first heavy thing I saw on the floor. It was a long metal tire iron, cold and rusty. Then I ran.

My ankle screamed. I didn't care. I limped and stumbled and ran across the grass with the tire iron in both hands.

"HEY!" I yelled. "HEY, UGLY!"

The rogue's head snapped around. Its yellow eyes found me.

I swung the tire iron as hard as I could and hit it right on the nose.

The rogue howled and jumped back off the young wolf. Then it turned toward me with its lips pulled back from its teeth, and I knew I had made a very big mistake.

It was going to kill me.

I backed away. One step. Two steps. My ankle was shaking. I couldn't run, and I couldn't fight a wolf with a tire iron.

Then I remembered.

*The ground near the east shore is soft,* Kael had said this morning. He'd pointed to it on the map. *Right by the big gray rock. It looks like grass, but it's really mud underneath. Deep mud. A wolf can sink to its belly.*

I looked to my left.

There was the big gray rock, twenty steps away.

I turned and limped toward it as fast as I could. The rogue came after me, snarling. I could hear its paws hitting the ground behind me, closer and closer.

Ten steps. Five steps.

I reached the gray rock and jumped up onto it with my good foot. I almost fell. I grabbed the rock with my hands and pulled myself on top of it.

The rogue jumped after me.

And it landed in the soft grass right in front of the rock.

The ground broke under its feet like wet bread. The rogue sank, fast, down to its knees, down to its belly. It howled and kicked and twisted, but the more it fought, the deeper it sank. The thick, black mud held it like a hand.

It was stuck.

I sat on top of the rock, gasping, holding the tire iron against my chest. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it had worked.

"Ha," I said breathlessly. "*Ha!* Who's the Hollow girl now?"

---

When it was over, three rogues were dead and one had run away into the trees. The one in the mud was still stuck, howling and snapping.

The young sandy gold wolf limped over to my rock. He was shaking. Slowly, he changed back into a human, and I saw that he was just a boy. He was skinny, with a face full of freckles and wet red hair. He grabbed a jacket from the grass to cover himself, and he looked up at me with big, wide eyes.

"You saved my life," he whispered. "You… you hit him with a *tire iron*."

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm Owen," he said. "I'm sixteen. I've only been a guard for three weeks. I'm, I'm…" He started to cry a little. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Hey. Hey, it's okay." I climbed down off the rock and hugged him. He was so young. Just a kid. "You were so brave, Owen. You ran right in."

"I ran right in like an idiot."

"Brave idiots are the best kind."

He laughed through his tears.

Then a big black shadow fell over us.

Kael. He had changed back too, and somebody had given him a pair of pants. Blood was running down his shoulder from the torn stitches. His chest was heaving. His eyes were still glowing.

He looked at me. At the tire iron in my hand. At the rogue stuck in the mud.

"I told you," he said, very quietly, "to get in the truck."

"I know."

"I told you not to wait for me."

"I know."

"You could have died."

"But I didn't." I lifted my chin. "And neither did Owen."

He stared at me for a long, long moment. I couldn't read his face at all. Then he stepped forward and pulled me against his chest so hard that the air went out of me.

He was shaking. The big, strong Alpha was shaking like a leaf.

"Don't ever do that again," he whispered into my hair. "Please. Don't ever do that to me again."

I put my arms around him and closed my eyes.

---

The brown wolf from before was a woman named Mara, an older guard with short gray hair. She and Kael pulled the last rogue out of the mud and dragged it onto the grass. It changed back into a man, thin and dirty with long tangled hair. He was badly hurt from the fight. Blood was coming out of his mouth.

He was dying. Everyone could see it.

Kael knelt down beside him and grabbed his shirt.

"Who sent you?" he growled. "Who was the archer? Tell me!"

The rogue laughed. It was a horrible, wet, broken laugh.

"Not one of us," he coughed. "The archer… not a rogue. He just pays us."

"Who? *Who pays you?*"

The rogue's eyes rolled. Slowly, they moved past Kael and landed on me.

They stayed on me.

And something strange happened in his face. It wasn't fear. It looked almost like he was hungry.

"Her," he whispered. "We came for her."

The whole world went cold.

"Why?" Kael shook him. "Why her?"

The rogue smiled at me with bloody teeth.

"Because he wants the silver girl," he breathed. "And you can't stop him, Alpha. Nobody can."

He coughed again, weaker now.

"He's already inside your house."

Then his eyes went still, and he was gone.