The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel(2)

In the end, he’d surrendered. Begged to come back with us. But relieved as I was to know finally that Jude was safe—I wasn’t ready to let him come home. Not until we were sure of his motivations. Not until I knew whether my brother was the one who had returned with us, and not just one of Caleb’s death dogs.

As surprised as the others had been when I suggested keeping Jude under lock and key for the time being, I was shocked that Dad and Gabriel actually agreed. Only April had protested, but her vote hadn’t counted for much.

She hadn’t seen the way Jude had stood by and let Caleb try to destroy me.…

A new text from Dad interrupted my thoughts: Yes, still at the parish. The howling is quite loud here.

That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. The parish was several blocks away. If Daniel’s howling was still loud there, that meant the whole town could hear it, too.

Dad: He’s going to get himself killed.

I know, I typed, my fingers shaking a bit. Rose Crest had a history of “wild dog” attacks—and unearthly howling from the woods surrounding the town would be enough to get people talking. And what they’d talk about were all those rumors about the Markham Street Monster. Rumors that weren’t really rumors at all. And then talking would lead to action.…

Dad: You MUST do something to stop him.

Me: I’m on it.

Except, I didn’t know if there was anything I could do—not if Daniel wasn’t responding to me anymore—but I had to at least try. I couldn’t let something bad happen to him. Especially after all he’d sacrificed to save me.

I pulled on my jacket over my red flannel pajamas and tucked my phone into my pocket. My tender ankle throbbed as I sank my feet into my tall faux-fur-lined boots. I hoped they were sturdy enough to keep the newly healed fracture from shifting out of place. I slinked quietly down the stairs, even though I was the only one home. Dad had sent Charity and James to spend the week at Aunt Carol’s because Mom was … somewhere I didn’t want to think about now.

I went out the door off the kitchen into our backyard. A light blazed in the house next door—the house that Daniel used to live in all those years ago—and I saw the silhouette of Mr. Dutton standing in the window. He looked in the direction of the forest—no doubt wondering about the source of the wolf’s cry that had probably awoken him—but I doubted he could see much with his own light on.

I stood on our back deck until Mr. Dutton moved away from the window. Before he had a chance to turn off the light for a better look outside, I mustered up a few extra ounces of power and took off in a sprint toward the back fence that separated our yard from the encroaching woods. Just before the rosebushes could snag at my pajama pants, I leaped over the fence. I winced at the shock of pain that ricocheted up from my ankle when my feet hit the ground on the opposite side. But other than that, I’d managed a perfect, almost soundless, landing.

For half a second I thought about how proud Nathan Talbot, my former mentor, would be if I told him about my quiet landing—something that we’d worked on in training. “For such a tiny girl, you land like a pile of rocks,” he’d teased me once, his cheeks dimpling with that warm smile of his.

And then, as if he knew I’d allowed myself even to think about him, my phone buzzed with a new text.

Talbot: Do you need any help?

I dropped my phone back in my pocket without responding. If I could manage it, I was never going to talk—or even text—with him again.

Talbot was the last person I’d ask for help now. The last person I’d trust. And all that crap that he’d said about loving me…

I took in a deep breath and told myself not to give Talbot another thought. Daniel needed me, and I had to find him before anyone else in town—like Deputy Marsh with his rifle—decided to go looking for the source of those terrible howls.

A patch of bushes rustled off to my right. I whirled at the sound—realizing I wouldn’t have noticed it without my superhearing—and crouched defensively. Panic pounded in my ears.

A large brown wolf stepped out from between the bushes onto the path in front of me, followed closely by a slightly smaller gray wolf. Their eyes glinted as they looked up at me. I nodded to them, trying to hide my disappointment that neither of them was the wolf I was looking for—but at least they weren’t a couple of local hunters.

The two wolves separated and sat at attention on either side of the rocky path. Like sentinels, awaiting my passage. Only five days ago, these two wolves had been part of the pack that had been intent on killing me at Caleb’s beckoning; now they bowed their furry heads in reverence as I passed between them.

While I questioned my brother’s intentions, these wolves were another quandary altogether. I mean, I still didn’t quite understand why they treated me this way—like I was practically their queen.

I’d asked Gabriel about it a couple of days ago. “As I told you in the warehouse, Daniel is their alpha now,” he’d explained as we stood in Dad’s office together, watching as the white wolf lay next to an untouched bowl of canned stew I’d set out for him by my dad’s desk. “And apparently, Daniel has done something to choose you as his … mate. The wolves recognize this somehow and have accepted you as their alpha female.”

And of course it turned out that my dad, the pastor, was standing behind us, and even though he was usually a pretty even-keeled guy, he went totally nuts over the word mate.