Page 22 of Wretched Thorns

Glenn’s eyes did not move.

“You can have them,” he said. Slowly. Like a man making sure he was being heard. “Take them. There are things much scarier than you.”

Jasper held him there a beat longer.

He had known. Halfway through the fight, he had known for sure. Glenn was not the kind of wolf you broke this way. Glenn had broken himself a long time ago and rebuilt himself for a different set of leverage points, and Jasper’s good old-fashioned wolf challenge just wasn’t gonna cut it.

Jasper let him go.

He stood up. His ribs were bleeding through his shirt. His jaw was bleeding. Glenn stayed on the floor where Jasper had put him, breathing through his teeth, the half-shift slowly easing back into the shape of a man.

Jasper stepped back exactly one step.

Glenn’s face did something Jasper had not seen it do tonight, or any of the other nights he had stood across from Glenn before tonight. The corner of his mouth had a tremor in it. His pupils were the wrong size for the lantern light. The half-shift had been instinct. Fight. Wolf. All of it was gone now. What was left was a man on a barn floor whose body had finally registered that they were far from finished with him.

The stench of Glenn’s fear burned the hairs in Jasper’s nostrils, and yet at the same time, it pleased his wolf.

He had heard Eli move. He came up alongside Jasper, and set the leather case on the floor. He had not opened it yet.

“Fillion,” Eli said.

Glenn’s eyes moved to Eli.

“You know what I am about to do.”

Glenn was quiet for the length of a slow breath.

“These things have a price,” Glenn said.

“I know.”

“You will pay for it the rest of your life.”

“That is mine to pay.”

A silence.

Glenn looked between the two of them. He looked at Eli’s hands, which had gone perfectly still. Then his eyes moved to Jasper and stayed longer than they should have. The way a wolf clocks a threat he had not put on his list.

“Where is she?” Eli asked.

***

“Hold him still,” Eli said.

Jasper shifted to Glenn’s other side and pinned his arms to the dirt. Glenn bucked, snarled, but Jasper had one brother down already, a mate that may be lost to him forever if they didn’t get answers soon and Glenn’s corrupted strength was nothing against that.

Eli knelt beside Glenn’s head. He pulled the leather case open. Inside were tools: a bone stylus, a vial of something dark, and a strip of leather inscribed with symbols older than the English language.

“No.” Glenn’s eyes went wide. The terror was real. The kind that came from recognizing something and knowing exactly what it could do. “No, don’t — you can’t — that’s old law, you have no right —”

“Old law for an old wolf.” Eli dipped the stylus in the vial. The liquid that coated the tip was black, viscous, and hummed with a frequency Jasper could sense in his teeth.

“Involuntary rune work is forbidden.” Glenn was writhing now. Real panic cracking through everything else. “The council banned this magic centuries ago —”

“The council also banned experimenting on yourself with dark magic.” Eli’s voice was like ice. “And yet.”

He pressed the stylus to Glenn’s forehead.