A Wolf in the Fold

Death in the Dark

I was cat footing across the prairie when I should have been thinking about Samson in particular, and Ty and Clell. I was forgetting the rules that had kept me alive for so long, rules I had made myself. I came on a gully I hadn’t known was there, stumbled down the slope, and collided with someone slinking along the shadows at the bottom. The next instant, iron fingers like a vise clamped onto my throat.

In the dark above me loomed Clell Butcher. I seized his wrist and sought to wrench his hand from my throat, but he was strong as a bull. His other hand locked on my right wrist even as his knee gouged into my gut, and he slowly bent me backward into a bow. All the while, his fingers dug deeper into my flesh.

I could not break his hold. I could not throw him off. My lungs started to ache for air. . . .