“They might still be sheltering in place.” Ben pointed his rifle at the ground for emphasis. “A powerful storm like this—it’s more than some creatures can bear. And the deer are always shy around this time of year. That’s why Father brings them in.”
“There were deer here recently,” Cal said. “They’re gone now, though.”
Ben swung his rifle up abruptly, straightening. “Not all of them.”
“This again.”
“What makes you thinkyouhave the right to flout tradition over the rest of us? You come back to this house all high and mighty, ordering us all around, and now, what, you plan to breed yourself an heir?”
Yes, that voice inside of him whispered. “I fucked her. You fuck women, don’t you?”
“I don’t bring them home.” Ben stepped closer. “I don’ttendto their wounds.”
“Maybe you should take better care of your things.”
“Her blood is weak. Her sister was a mistake, yes, but she was a true Cullraven bride. The legacy demands women who are poised and pleasing, who are willing to sacrifice their bodies to bear the next generation of heirs. That shrinking creature will never survive you—or us.”
“They don’t come to you.” Cal spoke quietly, anger piercing through the words like small envenomed blades. “You can’t even set a successful lure. They flee from you. Like your wife fled. And you had to blow up an entire fucking cliffside to keep her sister from getting away.”
Odessa stopped walking, shooting him a glare.
“No paper trails,” Ben said. “Isn’t that one of your affirmations?”
“I made her bleed,” said Cal. “And still, she begged for my cock. That makes her more of a sparrow than some of the other wives who walked over the threshold of this house.”
“Then perhaps I should thank you for breaking her in for me.”
“I’d sooner buck tradition and kill you myself,” Cal swore viciously.
Odessa sighed loudly. “You’re going to scare off all the game.”
“There is no game here,” Ben said. “Only Cal’s sedition.”
“Which we cannot hunt, either, unfortunately.” Cal turned his back on his older brother, so filled with fury that he nearly vibrated with it. His heel sank into the mud as he took a hard step to the right. “There will be better game when father’s deer get here.”
A sudden snap made his head rear up as he spotted a flash of brown through the screen of trees where the woods shaded into Cullraven property. It was too large to be a deer, and it ran on two legs instead of four. Human. Female.
“Nadine!” Odessa called out. “Oh, it’s Nadine! What is she doing here?”
Cal’s eyes snapped to the gate just as she broke out into a run.
“Oh, she wants a chase,” Ben said. “She really is a sparrow.”
She had heard them, her quick walk speeding up into a gallop. Cal shoved his gun at his sister and sprinted after her, ignoring Ben’s ugly laugh. He wasn’t sure what she had seen to make her run like this but he could guess. He knew what made women run like this.
He’d seen it before.
Perhaps his father had gotten to her first, poisoning her mind against him, against all of them. The lit spark to her fuse, igniting a conflagration of terror and fear.
If they truly planned to kill her, as Ben had suggested, it wouldn’t matter what she thought she knew. Terror only made prey fight harder, more desperately—and that was exactlythe sort of chase his family enjoyed: one with the urgency precipitated by the stakes of life and death.
“Stop running, Nadine,” he shouted. “Come here. Talk to me.”
“Stay the fuck away from me!” she shrieked back.
She was faster than he had expected. When he had chased her out of the Blue Bar the other night, she hadn’t exactly been trying to get away. And perhaps he was the monster she thought he was after all, because part of him thrilled at the anticipation of catching her, that focus heightening his appreciation of her pumping legs and the sight of her long hair flying up with every kick of her heels as she flew across the loamy soil. She was nearly elemental, a desperate sprite.
“There’s nowhere to go,” he called out. “The road’s blocked. Where are you going to go—the sheriff’s?” The words popped out of his mouth as she swerved down that familiar path, cutting around the dirt shoulder of the road. The sheriff’s. That was exactly where she was going. Her and that little bag filled with God-knew what.
