Chapter 13 #2
Everyone goes back to not speaking, and when my pulse kicks at me a little, I’m sure I’m having solstice nerves. And, you know, major wolf-pack revolution nerves.
Or maybe missing-all-this-in-advance nerves, too.
We’re all together in the quiet, and I know I’m going to miss the comfort of this, too.
In the den, someone’s always speaking. There are arguments in the tunnels.
There are always couples getting frisky in the alcoves.
Someone’s always talking, someone’s probably singing, cubs are always roughhousing.
There’s no avoiding interaction. Even in the grand cavern, which has a huge kitchen at the back where we can all go and prepare food as we like if we’re not sharing a meal, you can never avoid someone else’s presence.
Which almost always comes with some noise.
Wolves are not shy and retiring.
Once again, I tell myself that the things I’m giving up are worth losing, because Ty is the major benefit on the other end.
Especially this Ty, who has grown as much as I have over the years, since he’s now clearly as sick of the systems we live in as I am.
I’m not sure he was ten years ago. Five years ago.
But he is now.
I can handle a cave if it means I can make my life what I want it to be. If I can make our life what it ought to be. It seems like a fair trade.
Winter goes over and sits at the table with her coffee. I busy myself flash-frying up one of my classic breakfasts, but by the time I transfer my pile of meat to the table, Briar is already storming out.
Winter and I sit there a moment or so, long after the echo of that slammed door has faded.
“She was smiling,” Winter whispers, in a wondering sort of tone, but pitched low like she thinks Briar might be lurking outside the door. I can scent that she’s not. “How sweet was that?”
“No pun intended,” I reply.
She shakes her head at me. I grin.
I’m really going to miss this, but maybe that’s a good thing. You don’t miss the things that don’t matter.
Winter sips at her coffee. I eat.
“I went and saw Augie,” I tell her after a few bites. I glance at her just long enough to see something that looks like brightness in her eyes. That emotion I see so little of in her—and try so hard to hide in me. “He really is okay.”
Winter sits with that for a breath. Then another. “Do I want to know what okay means in this situation?”
I wonder if she already knows. If she sees things she doesn’t want to see and wants me to confirm or deny them. I wouldn’t blame her.
“It means he’s alive,” I tell her. Steadily. “He’s alive, and while I would not describe him as well, it could be worse. He has a long road ahead of him and a whole lot of battles to fight. No one else can fight them for him.”
“Meaning he needs to suffer through it,” Winter finishes. “When I can’t help thinking that he’s already suffered enough.”
“We don’t get to decide what we suffer,” I say quietly. “Only how we suffer.” I spear a bit of sausage and egg. “My grandmother used to say that.”
What I don’t tell her is that I didn’t like it when she said it to me, either.
“I hope he stays strong, of course.” Winter blows out a breath and slumps a little in her chair. “But if he could stay strong, he would have. Years ago. If he could stay strong, he wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.” She shakes her head. “Does that make me sound like a monster?”
I shrug. “Wolves drink a lot. And party a lot with anything else they can get their paws on, if I’m being honest. Packs put up with a whole lot of bad behavior in the name of a good time, because that’s our due as wolves, you understand.
We howl where we like, wolves forever, all that bullshit.
” I make a face, but I also make it clear I’m not kidding.
“But what we don’t tolerate is addiction.
Strong wolves have it a lot worse. They get locked up underground and are left to waste away, down to skin and bones.
They won’t die. They might wish they did.
But when they make it through, they’re clean.
The weak ones don’t make it that far, and some think that’s a gift. ”
Winter makes a small noise. “Is Augie locked underground? He was in a vampire holding cell for who knows how long. I really don’t think—”
I reach across the table and put my hand on hers. “You didn’t choose this for him, Winter. He chose it for himself. This is what he wanted, and I’m pretty sure he had a much better idea of what he was in for than you do. That’s a good thing.”
She sighs and closes her eyes, rubbing her forehead with her free hand. “It was so nice to have him back. If only for a little while. I’m just afraid that he won’t make it back from this. And then I’ll wish the rest of my life that he stuck around, blood addicted or not.”
“You don’t mean that.” I shake my head at her when she looks at me. “That would mean he didn’t claim his life at all. That he was drawn along on the tide of his addictions forever. If he didn’t try this, he’d be nothing but an addict. Forever.”
“I know. I know that if I was a good person, a good sister, I wouldn’t think this was any kind of a gray area.”
“His addiction makes him a target,” I say, evenly.
I know she knows this, but it bears repeating.
“Especially now. It made him the bargaining chip that he was when Ariel used him against you. It makes him a pawn, forever, for anyone who can get him his fix. Maybe he wants to live whatever life he has left on his terms. I have to respect that.”
It takes her a moment to give me a smile, but eventually I manage it. “Thank you,” she says, and her eyes are still bright, but I don’t think they might spill over anymore. “I appreciate you updating me. I’ll try not to have too many more breakdowns.”
I wave my fork magnanimously. “Have as many breakdowns as you like,” I tell her. “If I can help you, I will.”
Winter chugs her remaining coffee and then goes over to her coffee machine to start making herself another huge mugful. “You’re the one with the scheduled breakdown, I think. Don’t you have your solstice tonight?”
“It’s not my solstice.” I laugh. “It’s yours too. The darkest night of the year comes for us all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the vampires throw a little shindig themselves, given a long-ass night is their time to shine.”
Winter looks taken back. “Ariel did say that there was something at the MMA school tonight, now that you mention it. Is there usually a solstice party?”
“I don’t know that I would call it a party in the classic sense,” I say carefully, because I assume if it’s a vampire thing it will involve a lot of blood.
I’ve made some guesses, but I don’t really know where she is in her journey from decidedly anti-vampire to taking and giving blood with one.
And that’s not getting into all the rest of the creepy shit vampires can do.
“Most creatures like to mark the turn of the year tonight, yes.”
She looks at me for a moment. “What a careful and completely unsatisfactory answer.”
I grin. “Hey, all I know are rumors. This might shock you, but Ariel Skinner has never invited me to any vampire parties. On any night of the year, much less tonight.”
Winter lifts her mug at me in a kind of toast. “I’ll be sure to let you know if you’re missing out.”
I should tell her, I think. I should let her know what Ty is going to attempt tonight and what it could mean if he succeeds.
Yet if I tell her all that, I’ll also have to tell her what will happen if he doesn’t—and that’s something I don’t particularly want to think about myself. It won’t only be Ty who is killed if he can’t fight off all challengers. It will be all his lieutenants, and their families.
It will almost certainly be me, too.
Unless the winner thinks it would make more sense to humble me instead, and force me to mate with someone else and take a silent, servile role for the rest of my life. Wolf justice is brutal. They’d kill me straight off too, but wolves don’t like to waste a fertile female.
Especially not when decades of humiliation could be dished out instead.
These are not scenarios Ty and I discussed, because we both know all the possibilities. I find I can’t bring myself to talk them out with Winter, because I don’t really want to explain it all to her. It would make those possibilities far too real.
What I do instead is hug her, hard, as I go to leave.
“Oh,” she says, clearly surprised. Her gaze narrows on me. “Are you . . . ? You’re fine, right?”
“Happy solstice,” I tell her, and slip out the back door.
I walk back to the den, taking a different route through the snowy forest. I’m thinking about celebrations, bloody vampire parties versus the usual werewolf bacchanals. I feel a surge of those nerves again and remind myself that I’m going to get to watch Ty fight, which always thrills me.
He fights the way he fucks.
Lyrical. Creative. Wildly athletic.
Better yet, he always wins.
“He always fucking wins,” I whisper to myself, fiercely, as I scan the trees above me for any lurking banshees. Kind of wishing one might come at me so I could do something with all the sharp, jangly energy inside me.
I’m daydreaming a little bit at this point, thinking of banshees and Ty and fighting and winning—
Maybe this is why it takes me a moment or two to recognize the way the hair on the back of my neck is prickling. Another alarm, and this one for a much closer danger.
Not banshees this time.
I don’t change my pace. I don’t look around. But I am positive just the same. I can feel it, everywhere.
Something is watching me, malevolent and focused.
As I move, I can feel it move, too.
I keep walking, and I decide that it doesn’t feel like that darkness that chased me to Savi’s house. This feels smaller, but still deadly. Less catastrophic weather shift and more stalker.
It feels the way Winter’s vision sounded. I inhale, but all I smell are wolves. Lots of wolves. This is the main path to the den, and we’re at the end of a gathering week. Every wolf here has left scent behind.
Traitor, I think.
Not a death goddess, but a wolf. A wolf I know, or I would find an odd scent in the mix. Maybe after I make it through the solstice, I’ll have to unpack all the levels of what it means that one of my own people could do these things—but I have to live through today first.
Right now, I’m out here in the woods with no one around and a traitor on my heels. A traitor who’s a little overly interested in me. I see Winter’s vision in my head as if it’s mine, and I don’t like it.
On the other hand, I do like my chances with most wolves. With every wolf except Ty, as a matter of fact. I’m not fated to be his queen because I’m weak and slow.
Sure, if this was a wide-open field, I might worry. But it’s a forest. Nothing chasing me is going to corner as well as I do, and it’s unlikely that another wolf has as much riding on tonight as I do. There’s no possible way.
I don’t shift forms. I keep sauntering along, and as I go, I feel the presence get closer. I can feel the hatred like mist all over me. It moves closer still.
I keep myself from tensing up. I tell myself to keep my breathing even. I don’t want whoever is tracking me to have the slightest idea that I’m aware of them or that I think I’m anything but alone.
I know this old trail as well as if I cleared it myself. I’m approaching a narrow turn that I know leads down beneath an old felled tree trunk propped up across the path against a big rock. It creates a kind of natural tunnel, and if I were going to jump someone, that’s where I’d do it.
I make myself keep walking, seemingly oblivious. I can feel the tension in the air. I can almost scent the stalker behind me. It’s almost there. I can almost pull in a deep-enough sample of the scent signature that I should be able to identify the wolf in question—
But not quite. Not quite.
I start to take the turn, and I hear footsteps quicken behind me—
Let’s fucking go, I think, and I get ready to shift—
At the same moment, two of the younger wolf queens with their cubs in tow come barreling out of the tunnel from the other direction.
We all come this close to a full collision. I avoid mowing them over with sheer force of will.
The little cublings squeal with joy at the near miss, bounding around and barking at everything. Rocks. Beetles. Me.
“So sorry.” Rhiannon laughs, trying to corral her little wild ones, seemingly oblivious to how dazed I must look, because I sure feel it. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. “We’re on a mission to get these wiggles out.”
“They’re absolute monsters,” confides the other young queen, shaking her head. “Devils, every one of them.”
By the time they corral all the children and get them heading off along the path again, whatever was on my heels—about to attack—is gone.
Taking any chance I had to finally figure out their identity with them.
But it takes me much, much longer to settle.