Chapter 10 Last Dire’s Ashes #2
The blade glanced off the side of the log and buried itself in the stump with a jarring impact that rattled up through my arms.
“Shit,” I said.
Ronan made a sound that might've been a cough. Might've been a laugh he was trying to strangle.
“Again,” he said. “You're tensing up. Just relax into it.”
“Relax into it,” I repeated. “Great advice. Very helpful.”
“I'm serious. You're too tight. Loosen your shoulders.”
I reset the log. Tried again.
This time the blade caught the edge and split the log halfway before wedging in the grain.
“Better,” Ronan said. He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him even through the cold air. “But you're still gripping too hard. You don't need to choke it. Just hold it firm and let it do what it's made to do.”
My brain short-circuited somewhere around “you don't need to choke it” and I had to physically force myself to focus on the log instead of the fact that Ronan was standing close enough that I could smell pine sap and woodsmoke and clean sweat.
“Right,” I said. “Firm. Not choking.”
“Yeah.”
I pulled the axe free. Reset. Swung again.
The log split clean down the middle and both halves tumbled off the stump.
“There you go,” Ronan said. Approval in his voice, quiet and genuine. “Told you. Just needed to relax and let it happen.”
I was not relaxed. I was the opposite of relaxed. I was wound so tight that if he said one more accidentally suggestive thing about grip strength or letting the blade do the work I was going to have to excuse myself and go dunk my head in a snowbank.
“Wanna go again?” Ronan asked.
“No,” I said. “I think I've proven my point.”
“What point? That you can split one log if I talk you through it?”
“That I'm a fast learner when properly motivated.”
His mouth twitched again. “What's motivating you?”
Not getting humiliated in front of you, I didn't say. Also not making it obvious that watching you work with your hands is doing deeply inconvenient things to my ability to think straight.
“Pride,” I said instead. “Basic human competitiveness.”
“Hm.”
He took the axe back. Our hands brushed again and this time I was sure he noticed the way my fingers lingered half a second too long before letting go.
But he didn't say anything. Just set another log on the stump and split it clean, muscles moving under his shirt in a way that should've been illegal.
The tension in my chest had loosened somewhere in the middle of that. Shifted from the taut anxiety of arriving uninvited to this awkward, charged awareness that felt dangerous in an entirely different way.
We sat on the fallen log at the edge of the clearing. The silence didn't require management. It just existed, comfortable in a way that surprised me.
“I need to tell you about the raid,” I said.
He went still beside me.
I told him everything the border scout had written. The coordinated strike.
Ronan listened without interrupting. When I finished he was quiet for a long time, elbows on his knees, gaze in the middle distance.
“So they knew,” he said finally. “Before Daniel. Before any of you. What I was.”
“Long before.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “And I wasn't lost in a raid. I was hunted.”
“Yeah.”
He sat with that. The forest offered nothing useful.
“We're not telling anyone,” he said.
“Not yet.” I agreed without hesitation. “If the pack knows the raid was targeted, that someone had enough information to find a living dire before the pack knew one existed—the fear that produces will move faster than we can manage it.”
Ronan nodded. Slow. “Daniel's gonna be furious when he finds out we sat on this.”
“Daniel's gonna be furious regardless. I'd rather he be furious once, with all the information, than furious now with half of it.”
The corner of Ronan's mouth moved. Not quite a smile. “You've spent a lot of time managing Daniel.”
“I've spent a lot of time managing everyone. Professional hazard.”
“You walked away from your father. That makes you a target too. So why're you still here?”
I looked at the treeline. Let myself say it because he'd asked directly.
“Blood doesn't decide who you are,” I said.
“I've spent my entire adult life building evidence for that argument because I need it to be true for myself as much as anyone I've applied it to.
My father is what he is and I am what I chose to be.
Those are two separate things. Running won't change either of them.”
Ronan looked at me for a moment. Nodded once.
Neither of us said anything after that.
The sky was doing things worth watching.
The amber had burned out of the canopy, replaced by deep blue-grey. The stars were appearing in the gaps between branches.
“That one's wrong,” Ronan said.
I glanced over. He was looking up, chin tilted, expression open.
“Which one?”
“The bright one. Left of center. That's not where it usually is this time of year.”
I looked at the star in question. “That's a planet.”
A beat. “What?”
“Venus. Planets don't sit in fixed positions the way stars do. They move.” I paused. “You've been mistaking Venus for a star for how long, exactly?”
Ronan was quiet for a moment. “I'm gonna need you to keep that to yourself.”
“Absolutely not. This is the most useful thing I've learned in weeks.”
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Low and short and involuntary. It loosened the knot in my chest.
“What's that one then,” he said, pointing to a cluster slightly south.
“Orion's belt. The three in a row.”
“I knew that one.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“I knew the name. Wasn't sure which one it was.”
“That's the same as not knowing.”
He pointed at another. I named it. He pointed at another. I got halfway through explaining the mythological origin before catching the expression on his face—patient, attentive, at ease.
He wasn't absorbing a single word. He was just listening to me talk.
I stopped mid-sentence.
“You're not actually interested in the stars,” I said.
“I'm interested in the fact that you apparently have feelings about them.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Keep going. You were saying something about a hunter.”
I looked at him for a moment.
I kept going. Because I did have feelings about them.
The moon came up while I was mid-sentence.
It crested the treeline slowly. Enormous and unhurried, flooding the clearing with silver light. Ronan went quiet when it appeared. The natural quiet of a man whose blood recognized the moon the way other men recognized home.
The howl started at the pack house.
A single voice first—low and long and carrying through the dark. Then a second. A third. The pack finding each other in sound, building a chord that moved through the trees and into my chest.
Ronan made a sound low in his throat. Not yet a howl. The precursor.
He looked at me sideways. Light in his eyes that wasn't entirely from the moon.
“Don't,” I said.
“Haven't done anything.”
“You're thinking about asking me to join in.”
“Witches can't howl?”
“Witches have dignity.”
“Sure.” He tilted his head back and let the howl out. It went up through the canopy and across the dark with clarity that raised the hair on my arms—clean and low and unmistakably dire. An answering chorus rose from the pack house. Recognition. Welcome.
He dropped his chin. Looked at me. Still with that light in his eyes. Patient and certain.
“Gideon,” he said.
“No.”
“It's just a sound.”
“It is absolutely not just a sound and you know it.”
“Try it.” His voice went quieter. Genuinely curious. “Nobody's grading you.”
I looked at him. At the moonlight on his face and the patience in his expression and the way he was sitting next to me like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.
This is either the most inconvenient truth of your recent life or the most straightforward one.
I tilted my head back. Looked at the stars—at Orion's belt, at Venus that Ronan had thought was a fixed star, at the enormous moon.
The sound that came out of me was not a howl exactly. It was quieter, shorter, and it bore the unmistakable quality of a man who'd made a decision and was seeing it through regardless.
Ronan went very still beside me.
Then, from the pack house, one voice howled back. Just one. Higher than the others, quick and light.
Nate. That's Nate's pitch.
Which meant Nate had heard my voice and answered without asking anyone's permission.
I lowered my chin. Looked at the treeline instead of at Ronan.
Too much honesty. Can't look at him right now.
“Don't say anything,” I said.
“Wasn't gonna say anything.” His voice was warm. Carrying dry humor underneath. “Nate's got good ears.”
“Nate's got exceptionally inconvenient ears.”
“He responded, though.”
“I noticed.”
We sat with that. The pack house voices had settled. The moon held its position, patient and silver.
Ronan stood first. I stood with him. When he picked up an armful of split logs I picked up an armful without being asked.
We walked back through the trees toward the pack house lights. Our footsteps were quiet on the frozen ground.
At the bend in the path our shoulders brushed.
Deliberate on his part.
He's saying more with proximity than most people manage with paragraphs.
I didn't move away.
The pack house lights were warm ahead of us. The stars were out above us. And the Evernight Forest settled into night at our backs, keeping its counsel the way old forests always did.