The Truce Line
The first time her family hands Neve Tolliver the shot, the wolf in her crosshairs looks straight up her scope. Heat hits her low, and her finger will not pull.
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The story
The story
The first time her family hands Neve Tolliver the shot, the wolf in her crosshairs looks straight up her scope. Heat hits her low, and her finger will not pull.
Then he does the last thing a hunted wolf should. He walks toward the guns, turns into a man, and drags her off the ridge one step ahead of her family.
Keir Donnelly is the alpha of the Sweetbay pack, and her family killed his father. He gives his word anyway: one night under his roof, nobody touches her, and at dawn she walks. When one of his wolves grabs her arm, Keir puts him on his knees in the firelight.
Their bond pulls hardest in the dark of the moon. "If you put your hands on me tonight, Tolliver," he tells her, "I'll not be able to say what it was for."
At dawn he opens the gate. She walks through it. Then she turns around.
A steamy enemies-to-lovers wolf-shifter romance with a fated-mate bond and a hero who wants her yes out loud.
Spice map
Where it gets hot
Heat, chapter by chapter. No spoilers, just warning.
The world
Know your way around
Place
- Cold Fork
- The creek where the Tollivers' steel finally held the big wolf, three days before the hunt. He tore out of the leg snare and left half the wire behind, dragging the rest.
Character
- Davis Tolliver
- The youngest Tolliver, nineteen, who still rehearses out loud in the truck what he'll say if he ever gets a shot, when he thinks nobody is listening.
- Ephraim Tolliver
- Neve's father, who runs the family hunts in a low, even voice that never rises and closes like a gate. He won't allow the word alpha at his table, and the night before the hunt he slides her grandfather's crossbow across the oilcloth to her.
- Garrett Tolliver
- Neve's older brother, the rifle on the near spur, who calls the wind and goes quiet before anything starts. He carries a scar on his forearm that nobody is allowed to ask about.
- Keir Donnelly
- Alpha of the Sweetbay pack, whom the Tollivers have only ever called the big one. On the first morning of the hunt he is the gray wolf in Neve's crosshairs, three days lame on her family's snare wire, and when the wind turns he looks straight up her scope.
- Neve Tolliver
- Twenty-five, and the steady one in a family that has hunted wolves for four generations. She has held the light through six years of family hunts and sung alto in the church choir for eighteen, and this morning, for the first time, her father gives her the shot.
Object
- Grandfather's crossbow
- The Tolliver crossbow, its walnut stock worn to a shine where Neve's grandfather and father pressed their faces. The night before the hunt her father lays it on the kitchen oilcloth, string waxed fresh, and turns the stock toward her.
Pack lore
- The bond
- What hits Neve through the scope when the wolf's eyes find her: heat low under her breastbone, her whole body leaning toward the bowl, and the certainty that he knows her. It is mutual, and it arrives without asking anyone's permission, hers least of all.
Family
- The Tollivers
- Four generations of wolf hunters: a trap line along the boundary, bolts in the barn, and a father's word that nobody at the table answers back. The first thing they teach their children, before the safety catch, is that every wolf is a killer wearing a man's face.
Spoiler-safe. Only what you learn in chapter 1.
