Akira Stone's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

Akira walked three steps behind him because that was what a smart prisoner did. The alpha did not look back. He did not need to. His ears tracked her without turning, one flicking every time her boot broke a twig. She kept her eyes on the ground and her hands loose at her sides. Her satchel bumped her hip with every step. Inside it were the last things that could save her or hang her: bloodroot, a bone needle, the moss she had used on his sister's pup. She could not read him. That was the problem. He had not bound her wrists. He had not drawn a weapon. He had not spoken since the clearing. A man who meant to kill her would have been easier. A man who meant to spare her would have said so. Jasper did neither. He walked. She followed. The trees thickened, then thinned, and the path packed harder under her feet, which meant feet had walked it often. She decided to test him with the smallest thing she had. "The pup will limp for a day," she said. "Not more." He stopped. He turned his head, not his body. "You spoke to me on my land." "You asked me here." "I told you here." A pause. "Keep walking." She kept walking. But he had answered. That was information. She filed it. The trees opened onto a clearing and a log cabin squatted at the center of it, timber walls dark with weather, a porch worn smooth by boots. Smoke came from the chimney. Two wolves lay on the steps and lifted their heads when he crossed the tree line. Neither growled. One thumped its tail once, at him, not at her. He stopped at the bottom step and finally turned to face her. Up close his eyes were the color of a struck match, the same as in the woods, but tired now. He looked at her for a long moment. He was smelling her again, she realized. Not her skin. Something under it. "You're not going in there," he said. She waited. "My sister wants your throat for touching her son. My second wants your throat for crossing the line. If I take you inside, I have to decide in front of them, and I'm not deciding yet." He nodded at a small shed at the edge of the clearing. "You sleep there. Door bars from the outside. I bring food in the morning." Akira lifted her chin, just enough. "And then?" "Then I figure out what you are." He looked at her satchel. "Keep your bag. Don't make me sorry." She walked to the shed. He shut the door. The bar dropped. She sat on the dirt floor with her back to the wall and let the breath out of her chest for the first time in an hour. He had not killed her. He had not freed her. He had bought himself a night to decide, which meant she had bought one too.