Chapter 12
Wolf Moon, waxing crescent
I keep my word.
I go back up to the den with all my queens in tow that day, and I spend the evening with them. Not only for diplomatic reasons. I like them. We have more in common than we don’t. Making these connections is supposed to be the point of these gatherings.
“It never hurts to have sympathetic ears in a number of different packs,” my mother murmurs later that night, immediately making me feel . . . gross.
“Not everything is strategy,” I mutter.
She whips her head around to spear me with one of those looks of hers. The firelight makes her look even more fierce than usual, all those shadows and hollows on her face.
“It should be.” Johanna snaps that out like she can’t believe I said such a thing. “Why are you incapable of remembering your position, Maddox? Even now?”
I do remember my position. That’s why I bite back the response I’d like to make, because we’re in public. Nothing instills less confidence in a leader—or a future leader—than watching said leader have a fight with her mom. So I keep it together. I say nothing.
Privately, of course, I seethe—though I let Ty help me work out my tension later when he finds me curled up in his bed.
The next morning I wake up early and sneak out through the private entrance that we used yesterday.
I don’t want anyone to see me on this errand.
Not that I would care too much if it was my own pack, but I don’t want to explain what’s happening with Augie Bishop to any of the other packs.
They already don’t like the fact that I seem to have all these relationships with non-wolves.
They have a lot of opinions about what I do and where I live and all the rest of it.
It’s fine to skulk around human towns like species tourists, apparently—but actually living with them?
Getting along with them? They don’t like that at all.
They definitely won’t like the fact that Ty is trying to help one of them. Especially not when what he’s trying to help Augie with is a nasty blood addiction. It’s not like the general werewolf population is all that fond of vampires, either.
Once outside, I breathe in the stillness.
Everything feels hushed around me as I start off, heading away from the den and going much deeper into the forest—up higher into the mountains.
An old mining track that humans used to transport water to the mine runs a ways into the woods, some thirty miles or so, and used to be a fairly popular hike.
It’s overgrown now, but wolves love that. The wilder the better.
I navigate my way along the old mine ditch trail for a while, enjoying the wet, green morning and the fog that teases its way in and around the trees.
I know where I’m going in a general sense, but I still have to look for the turnoff as I get closer.
It’s a little mark on the side of a perfectly unexceptional tree in a particularly wily patch of underbrush.
It would look like nothing at all to anyone who couldn’t also scent our pack in the marking.
I leave the trail and get into even less-traveled woods, the kind of places humans gave up on, reverting to mapping from above. This area is too craggy, too unforgiving, too dangerous for bipeds.
Places like this have the Kind written all over them. My kind in particular.
I keep going until I reach a solid wall of rock. It juts out from the mountainside on an angle, a steep and craggy outcropping. It requires that I shift back and forth between my forms as I climb up it, because neither version of me could do it alone.
At the top, I pause for a moment and look back over the forest, seeing nothing but trees and hills.
No hint of habitation in any direction, and there’s a part of me—my ferocious wolf heart—that wants only these wild places.
The cold wind on my face, out here in these hills that separate the Rogue Valley from the ocean.
Out here where it smells like freedom.
I take a few deep breaths, then I turn around and move toward the rest of the mountain that heaves up even higher than the ledge I’m on. Before I reach the sheer rock face, I stop. And look down.
And down.
There’s a dizzying ravine cut deep into the mountainside.
It has no other exit or entry except from up here.
It’s slippery and steep, and only extremely sure-footed wolves can get down there at all.
Humans could possibly manage it with rope systems, but they would have to find this place first, and that’s unlikely.
We call this the cell for a good reason.
Down at the bottom of the ravine, some fifty feet below me, is Augie.
I know they feed him once a day, only easily digestible things that he barely touches because his system is in a revolt against food.
Moisture collects on the rocks at the bottom, and he licks them when he needs it.
Our sentries come here to slide things down to him, check on his overall health, and otherwise let him be.
He doesn’t complain. Mostly, he’s delirious. Maybe he doesn’t know who he is, much less what to complain about.
Augie has been here a little over a month now, and I know Winter wouldn’t like what she saw if she was here. That’s why Ty made it clear that there would be no visiting. Not for a long while yet, if at all.
But to my eye, Winter’s twin is doing about as well as can be expected.
He hasn’t died yet, the way so many blood addicts do when they’re cut off.
Their systems shut down and they can’t come back from it, but Augie is still kicking.
He also hasn’t tried to claw his own face off, as I saw one detoxing creature do once.
This isn’t to say he hasn’t hurt himself, but we have ways of healing those sorts of minor wounds. That would go under the heading of more things Winter doesn’t need to know about, unless and until Augie survives.
When thinking these things makes me feel disloyal to my friend, I remind myself that she’s not the one who wanted this. She’s not the one who asked us to do this. Augie was the one who declared that he wanted to be clean and that he’d do anything to make it happen.
I sit there, looking at his too-skinny frame curled up in a battered lean-to shelter tucked in against the side of the ravine.
He’s wrapped in blankets, eyes closed, but he’s twitching.
I remember him way back in school. Growing up, Augie was absurdly beautiful—a blond with those same indigo eyes that have always made Winter so mysterious-looking.
He wafted about like some kind of dreamy angel through the notably uncelestial Medford school district, his head forever in the clouds.
It wasn’t a huge surprise that he ended up being one of the classmates we lost to drugs. He was always too otherworldly, and if I know anything, it’s that it takes a thick skin to survive this world. Before and after the Reveal.
I didn’t want to tell Winter that I thought it was highly unlikely that Augie would survive a single week of the harsh cold-turkey detox Ty put him on.
But here he is, still alive more than a month later.
I tell myself it’s a sign. That good things are possible even in the darkest circumstances.
I keep thinking this the following night, as I settle in to watch my brothers win the mates of their choosing.
Tonight there are fewer fights, but all of them are more intense. Some females have already chosen a mate, forgoing the pleasure of watching males fight for them. Each of the remaining unmated women have at least two males vying for their attention, and I’ll admit it—I wonder what that’s like.
I’m sitting on the ledge with Ty, not with my family.
I can feel all of his wild heat and leashed power like it’s his scent, winding itself all around me.
I have to caution myself not to lean into him—not because I don’t want to or think he wouldn’t welcome it but because this night isn’t about us.
Sitting up here means too many people are watching us as it is.
Ty has handed over the fighting to Connor, who has the ability to be charming one minute and a scary badass the next. He’s doing his drill sergeant impression tonight.
“Let’s go, assholes,” Connor barks when two males spend too much time circling each other without making a move. “This isn’t a tea party.”
The males throw themselves at each other, then roll around, snarling.
Beside me, Ty sighs. “Pathetic.”
“Must be nice to have males grappling over you,” I point out, grinning when he slides a dark look my way. “Personally, I wouldn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t like it.” Ty sounds annoyingly sure of himself. Even more than usual, that is.
“I’m betting I would.”
“No,” he tells me, leaning closer. “You wouldn’t. You would be disappointed. Crushed, even.”
He wants me to ask why. I refuse to ask why. But he has no intention of telling me unless I do—I can see it in the arrogant tilt of his head—so I cave. I want to know more than I want to hold out, a typical failing on my part.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll bite. Why do you think I wouldn’t enjoy this rite of passage available to every other female of age? A time-honored tradition beloved by all and sundry?”
There’s a new fight below us and it sounds a lot more serious, but Ty’s gaze is on me. I have to repress the urge to shiver.
“No one would dare oppose me, babe.” He laughs. “And if someone did? I’d kill him. It would take one strike.” His dark eyes gleam. “Like I said, you wouldn’t like it.”
What I do like, though, is how warm and downright giddy that makes me.
So much so that I almost miss my brothers’ turns.
Micah goes first. He lets the other male get a few swipes in, but I’ve seen him fight before, more cat than wolf.
He waits until his opponent feels confident, then dominates. It’s over fast.
Asher’s fight follows a similar trajectory, though he is less strategic. He lets his opponent get too close—or so it seems—and then explodes. When he does, he wins easily.