Cameron stokes's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

The men held Cameron's arms, and Fenrir turned toward the trail into his land. She twisted her head back. Asher stood at the border's edge, where the pines ended. He had not stepped across. He had led her three days, warned her, armed her. Now he hung back like a man who had reached his limit. "Asher," Cameron said. "Tell him. Tell him how I came to you. Tell him you knew the pendant." Asher's green eyes met hers. His jaw worked. He looked at Fenrir, then at the ground. "I'm a guide," he said. "I brought her to the line. That's where my work ends." He took a step back into the trees. "I can't speak for her inside the king's land. No stranger can." The words dropped into Cameron like cold water. Without him, she had no voice here. Only her own claim, and Fenrir had already called it a thief's lie. She felt the pull in her chest, taut toward the man who gripped her mother's silver. The pendant. It was the only thing that spoke for her now. Fenrir stopped. He opened his fist and looked at the silver feather in his palm. The barbs caught the rising moon. Nearby, a cluster of white moonflowers glowed pale along the trail's edge. Cameron knew what she had to do. She could not run. She could not argue. She could only give him the truth he feared. "Your mother wore it on the left," Cameron said. "The chain had a worn link near the clasp. She mended it with her own hands." Fenrir went still. His head turned slowly. "How do you know that." "Because I dream her," Cameron said. "Since I was a child. A woman with your eyes, pressing this into my hands. I never knew her name. I only knew I had to find the man it belonged to." Her voice shook. "I'm not a thief. I'm what the pull says I am." The moonlight lay flat on his face. He stared at her the way a man stares at a thing he buried and dug up again. His men waited. The grip on Cameron's arms did not loosen. But Fenrir did not say thief again. "Release her," he said. The hands fell away. Cameron rubbed her arms and stood on the king's land at last. Fenrir did not return the pendant. He closed it in his fist and held it against his chest. "You cross," he said. "But not as my mate. As a woman who knows too much about my dead mother." His voice was low and hard. "You'll come to the pack. You'll answer for every word. And if you lie to me once, no border will save you." He turned and walked into his land. The men fell in behind him. Cameron followed, past the glowing flowers, into the dark trees. She had crossed. She had won her way in. But she walked as a prisoner, not a queen, and her pendant walked ahead in another's hand.