Chapter 5 #3
“She said her dreams are little muddy lately,” I say, and note that I feel oddly protective of Winter when that shouldn’t apply here. The oracle’s ability to see the future shapes that future. Everyone knows this. She’s a public resource, and the state of her abilities matters.
I still want to protect my friend.
“I’ve actually been finding these gruesome little offerings for a while,” Savi offers up after a moment of quiet between us, filled by the birdsong in her thick spring trees despite the snow I walked through to get here.
“Not only around the perimeter here. In the woods surrounding our cottages in Jacksonville, too.”
I stare at her. “You mean not just the one I found tonight?”
“They are always such tiny, insignificant little creatures. A raccoon at most. It’s hard to imagine there’s any kind of message there.”
“How have I not noticed a rash of butchered animals on our doorsteps? I would scent that immediately. From miles away.”
Savi gazes at me. “I scrub them off the scent profile when I find them lying around in public places, like the cottages.” When I stare back at her, she laughs.
“It didn’t seem serious to me. Certainly not serious enough to do anything about it.
There are any number of creatures who might take exception to Winter, to Winter and Ariel, to you and me and our mysterious little Briar living there all together.
I couldn’t tell if the offerings were in protest or warning or just creatures sneaking around being creepy because they can.
Besides.” Her gaze hardens. “A better question would be why whoever is doing this wanted to make certain you were aware of it this time.”
I don’t think of much else all the way home.
I don’t run through the mountains this time.
I take the largely abandoned state road that used to connect the towns in this valley like little jewels strung along the same necklace—Bear Creek, in this case, then veer off onto the old greenway.
I used to go jogging here in my human form, not the least bit intimidated by the scary people—mostly human—who lurked about along the wide, pleasant path along the river and liked to set fires, assault the odd passerby, and do as many drugs as possible.
They never bothered me. Back before the Reveal, it was always the marginal people—those who stayed on the edges—who could see me for what I was.
Now it isn’t humans who lurk, but they’re still more afraid of my wolf than I could ever be of them.
I follow the path as it winds its way toward the center of Medford, now in ruins and overrun by vampires.
Before I get there, I leave the greenway behind and take Stage Road again, letting it lead me into the foothills, with Jacksonville waiting just beyond.
It’s late when I find myself on California Street again, the main drag.
The holiday lights tug at me. I feel something like nostalgia for the childhood I never had here.
When I pause and think about it, a wolf slinking through the shadows long after the human curfew, I realize it’s the same longing I felt then.
The yearning for a safe, sweet human life that involved roasted chestnuts, holiday parades, Santa’s lap beneath a decorated Christmas tree, and all the things that go with human holidays. Candles. Feasts.
I can’t imagine not being a wolf. Not being me. But every now and again, on lonely streets in my childhood home, I remember too well what it felt like to wonder. Back when I couldn’t quite fathom what fate had in store for me, or what it meant for my future.
I pick up my pace as I lope up the hill, cutting back into the woods, thinking of Ty and these years I’ve had him in so many ways—if not the way he wants me now.
I would trade a thousand Christmases for a night with him, not that I’d tell him such a thing. He’s arrogant enough as it is.
I remember that hope and grief, tangled altogether inside me high up on that rock. So close to the stars before that darkness came for me. That quiet, irrevocable understanding that one way or another, this in-between time of ours is ending.
And I still can’t fathom how it will go, this future that fate has already decided for us, whether bitch goddesses rise in a rainstorm of blood or stay lodged down beneath the cold blue water of the lake, halfway to hell where they belong.
When I come barreling out into the yard at the top of the hill, Ty is so much on my mind, and in my nose, that it takes me a second to realize that he is actually here, too.
Lounging there against the door of my cottage like he’s been there awhile.
I switch forms, because we generally keep our wolves in the woods, as I walk toward him.
His dark eyes glitter in the night, like constellations made of fate and fire, and only for me.
“Thought you were pretty much done with me,” I drawl as I approach.
“I’d like to be,” he retorts.
That doesn’t hurt. We’re not in that space—not right now—and anyway, I know he’s lying.
“It was pretty dire last night.” I shove my hands in the back pockets of my jeans as I take my time walking toward him. “I was pretty sure I was going to get the silent treatment until the new moon.”
“I can’t stay away from you, asshole,” Ty growls at me. “You know that.”
I used to think it was just that fated thing of ours. Some power that drew us to each other despite everything. Even all the way across the country, settled deep in all that concrete in New York City, I felt this pull to him. I always feel it.
Like we’ve been chained to each other from the start.
I’m beginning to wonder if fate has anything to do with it. Maybe it’s just us.
“If you could,” I say quietly, “that might go a long way toward soothing other people’s feelings in the pack. They might not spend so much time worrying about whether or not I’m disrespecting you.” I pause and lift my eyebrows at him. “My liege.”
He smirks at that title that no one calls him, ever, then pushes himself off my front door in another effortless show of grace and offhanded athleticism. Like he does.
“You’re definitely disrespecting me,” he assures me. “All day and all night, far as I can tell. Good thing you’re hot.”
I tip my head back as he comes closer and keeps coming, until he’s towering over me. “How hot?” I ask. “Exactly? Feel free to give examples.”
I smile as he growls at me. Then I laugh as he picks me up, tosses me over his shoulder, and hauls me into my cottage to toss me face down on my very soft bed.
Where he spends a very long time showing me exactly what he means by hot.