Chapter 5
I change into my wolf form and take in the scene before me with my expanded senses.
Then I backtrack, loping around the perimeter of the yard and taking in every scent that I can find.
I can smell that Winter came back here and then left again.
I can follow Briar’s confusing scent profile into the woods, seemingly headed down into Jacksonville. By foot.
That’s one of her oddities, out here in a place where predators are so thick on the ground that most folks without their own fangs and claws prefer vehicles, but I can’t smell any blood on her. Besides, I’ve decided we’re going to be friends.
I can’t track the creature on my cottage step. I can track every bird and squirrel within a five-mile radius, but not the critter I want to know about. All I get from it is the same off sort of scent that bothered me last night.
If someone is sneaking around, following me and leaving me dead things—and I think it’s pretty clear that they are—I should be able to track them.
Or at least get a sense of them here, even if they know enough to cover their tracks.
There’s always something to find, especially when there’s so much blood and guts involved.
And an arrangement that suggests a lot of handling of those things.
But aside from that faint off vibe, I can’t smell anything out of the ordinary.
There’s not much that could make me more uneasy.
I don’t want to touch the sacrifice, but I don’t want to leave it out here, either. I also don’t really feel like picking it up with my mouth, my only option in this form. I switch back to my human form and clean up as best I can, burying what’s left of the poor creature in the woods.
Once I’m done, I don’t really feel like going back and sitting there in my cottage.
Not only because someone clearly wants me to know that they know I live there.
I would say every last member of the Kind, not to mention vast swaths of what remains of the human population, knows I live here on Winter’s land.
Knowing where I live in a general sense is no big deal. That’s life in a small town. Feeling confident enough to leave whole bloody messes on my doorstep in two separate locations, on the other hand, feels less adorably rural Oregon and more . . . upsetting.
Out in the woods, I stay crouched down over the grave I dug and realize that with all the full moon drama, I never told Ty about that skunk. It’s not great that now another grisly little offering has turned up. The very next night, in fact.
Once again, I find myself thinking about those cloaked little horrors who followed Vin?a around.
I shake my head at the gnarled madrone tree before me, because I know it can’t be them.
Visions of Briar possibly being a potential target aside, Winter is the one who had the most intense connection to the death goddess.
If Vin?a was still actually out here kicking around and making noise from her watery prison, Winter would know.
More to the point, she would know and she would tell the rest of us.
When lecturing myself on this topic doesn’t work, I head back toward the cottages, though I stay inside the boundary of the woods. Keeping myself in the shadows and letting the early December night fall inky and hard around me.
Just in case anyone is hanging around, unscentable for some reason, and watching.
I can’t scent Briar in her cottage, which matches the tracks she left on her way down the hill. Everything seems to suggest that Savi is in her cottage, though when I knock on the back window, there’s no answer. There’s not even a hitch in the murmuring I hear from within.
It takes me about two seconds to decide that it’s her usual sorcery games at work. Savi is one of the most powerful people around. She’s not killing time in a tiny cottage here on a hill in Jacksonville, no matter what she wants Winter to think.
Luckily, I know where she really lives.
And my body is desperate to get out there and run, so that feels like a plan.
I start off at a jog, still on two feet. I wait as I pick up speed. I go faster and faster, and when I get to the top of a small gorge, I jump.
I explode into my wolf form.
Then I let her run free.
I head up into the mountains, taking the long way over and around them as I make my way toward Ashland. I can sense pack in the distance, but I don’t stop. I’ve had enough pack today, thank you.
The deeper I get into the wilderness, where very few humans have ever ventured, the better I feel.
Just me and the places my paws take me, places only paws can go.
These mountains have sheltered me most of my life, and I know them like friends.
I see the marks of fires over the years, downed trees from winter storms, the shifting map of age and time.
Up high, there’s already considerable snow, and it makes everything even better, crisp and clean and cold enough that even I can feel it.
I wish Ty was with me, because I know that he loves the snow. When he can actually enjoy it and even play in it a little bit. Something he’ll never do with anyone but me.
Another secret I keep from my family and the pack. Secrets about the man Ty is when he doesn’t have to be their king. Secrets that belong to the two of us whether they like it—or me—or not.
It really is easier to miss him when he’s not with me—not because I don’t love him but because everything about him is so big.
He fills the space, any space, so intensely that I always feel I have to fight against it.
It always looks like fighting him, I know, no matter what it is I think I’m trying to do.
Up on this mountain in the starlight, away from everything, I can hear myself think.
And what I think is that I’m really fucking tired of fighting Ty.
I stop moving, finding my way to the top of a large boulder so I can take in the sweeping view of this valley I’ve never been able to put behind me.
Not for long. Certainly not for good. It’s dark, but I can see the lights here and there, marking everything from human encampments to Kind parties and what looks like the odd goblin ball.
Up above, the stars are heralding the rising of the moon.
It’s quiet up here, but not still. The wind picks up, and that feels good too as it ruffles my fur.
The Wolf Moon is coming, and so are the other North American packs.
Reality is crashing in on me, but I knew that it would.
It always does. Maybe, if the Reveal hadn’t happened when it did, I would have had more time to make a case for myself as an independent wolf who also happens to be the king’s mate.
Maybe, I tell myself, that will be a lesson you save for your daughter.
And for a while, I can’t tell if what I feel inside of me is grief . . . or hope.
I don’t know how long I sit here, making myself a part of the rock beneath me. Or how long I would have stayed here, but something changes.
I feel it, like a tuning fork somewhere deep inside of me, off-key and unpleasant.
I’m not alone.
I scan the area around me, keeping my movements subtle, certain that I would have heard it if someone had approached. Besides, who can? This rock is far, far away from any paths or trails or lost maps.
Still, I can feel another presence, dark and oily. I can smell it on the wind. In my mind, I see lit torches and red cloaks.
I know it’s impossible, but the abject horror and slimy feeling that pools in me feels a whole lot like some top-tier death goddess shit.
I want to stay and see for myself. I want to see what’s either chasing me specifically or is just . . . up here in the most remote part of these mountains for fun.
I want to see what it thinks is fun.
But if I stay here, I’m done.
I know this as surely as I know my own paws and the rock I’m on. And one thing about being in my wolf form—I don’t overthink.
I run.
I run until I can see the town of Ashland before me. I run and I don’t look behind me. I run no matter how it feels inside me, and how dark and thick the night is as it seems to cling to me and tug and me and make as if to drag me back—
I won’t go back. I don’t.
I skirt the actual town of Ashland and its humans, who exist in another supposedly mostly safe area, thanks to the intercession of some very old magical things that like it that way. Green magic. Earth magic.
They spill blood here to grow things, not to cause them pain. But they also don’t like monsters that tip the balance, so I keep to the edges until I can make my way up the slope of Mount Ashland, and then around it. I don’t slow down until I reach protected land. Savi’s protected land.
Only then do I let myself breathe, though I still don’t look back.
I can feel the darkness, a putrid thickness right there behind me.
But I know I’m safe on the sorceress’s land, so I shake myself off.
Then I pad away from that warded boundary and head deeper into her woods, which might accept anyone—but don’t necessarily let them leave.
With a go fuck yourself in every step, I can only hope.
Like everyone, I know that Savi lives up here, with her bird’s-eye view of the valley on one side, the high hills of California on the other, and a line of volcanos to the east to keep her company. Also like everyone, I’ve never actually been here before.
I can feel the power here, swirling around like fog, but there’s also a beating heart at the center of it. That’s what I aim for as I walk through pristine, untouched snow beneath a canopy of high pines. I don’t look back, but if I did, I know I’d see only my paw prints out here.
I walk and walk, because somehow I think running would be rude, having already decided to appear uninvited. A docile show of casually wandering into her space, I’m hoping, will be seen less as an invasion and more . . . friendly. Because that’s what we are. Friends.
I hope.