Chapter 13
I wasn’t stupid enough to think Dakota’s underlings were my friends. But I’d baked their favorite foods for months, had smiled in their general direction whenever we passed each other on the street, and had greeted each one by name. So I wasn’t prepared for the ferocity with which they launched themselves at my supine and restrained body.
In fact, I was so terror stricken that I didn’t even shift. Just lay there and watched death barrel toward me with gleaming fangs and greedy grins.
And as I waited for the end, I caught—for one split second—a trio of aromas that was tantalizingly familiar. Rotten leaves, sawmill lumber, and sunlit moss. Each odor was an ordinary part of the surrounding forest, but it was unusual for all three to be borne together on the same whiff of autumna
