Chapter 36
36
The blizzard lasted all night long. As he dipped in and out of sleep, Lachlan listened to the wind battering Pinky’s house and roaring through the spruce trees. With Maura tucked in his arms in her makeshift bed, which barely fit the two of them, he knew there was no place else he’d rather be. Bring on the storms, bring on the wolves, we’ve got this.
He dreamed of those wolves running wild through the forest. Yellow eyes flashing between branches. The woman who chose to become a wolf. Blood dripping in the snow. One image flashing to another, like a slideshow.
He woke up shuddering, knowing that something in his dream was a message. Often his mind had a way of working things out during a dream, especially if he’d been working on a tough project. If he was lucky, he’d remember it when he woke up.
He gazed up at the bare beams of the ceiling, replaying the images that had made up his dream. There was something strange about that dream, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Maura was still asleep, her mouth partly open, soft breaths warming his neck. Pale pearly daylight was filtering into the room, and from the sliver of the window he could see from the bed, it was still snowing.
The yellow eyes of a wolf.
The dream image came back to him. There was something important about the eyes. He thought about the eyes of the wolf who had attacked his window. Unlike in his dream, that wolf’s eyes were a deeper amber color. If he had to choose an adjective for their expression, it would be…confused.
As if the wolf itself didn’t know what he was doing there or how he’d gotten there. And the way he’d suddenly abandoned his attack and wandered back into the woods. Not as if he had a destination, but as if he didn’t know what else to do.
Wolves hunted. They defended their territory. They were social animals devoted to their packs. That was why the indigenous tribes felt such respect for them—their purpose on this earth wasn’t much different from that of humans.
But what if a wolf forgot its purpose? What if something disrupted its memory? Did a wolf’s memory even matter, or were those imperatives hard-wired into their brains on such a primitive level that they never failed?
Again he thought of his dream, of the snapshot nature of the images, how there was no flow from one thing to another. No story. No link from one moment to the next. That was odd, wasn’t it? Didn’t dreams usually tell a story, even if it was a surreal one that made no sense? What would life be like if there were no story, no narrative? Humans would be lost without a sense that life had a shape to it, a beginning, a middle, and an end. A purpose.
Wolves probably had another kind of existence, one it would be impossible for a human to enter into—except for Qisaruatsiaq, of course, the woman who became a wolf. But they had memories. They knew where their territory began and ended. They knew which wolves were in their packs and which weren’t. They remembered that humans were dangerous. They didn’t live moment to moment, in snapshots, although they probably didn’t retain the complicated storylines that human beings did.
Maura stretched next to him, her bare skin warm against his chest. Before he could even say a word, she draped a leg over his hip and tugged him closer. He felt his erection rise, though truth to tell, he’d been half-aroused ever since he’d woken up. So far, he hadn’t mastered the ability to sleep in the same bed with Maura without wanting her.
She rolled on top of him, her full breasts nearly blinding him with desire. He reached for her, like a child going for candy. They filled his palms with their soft weight, their rising nipples. He reached between her legs and found her damp and warm, already slick.
She must have had a very different dream than he had, he thought with amusement.
Wordlessly, mindful that they weren’t alone in the house, they fitted their bodies together. With her thighs spread on either side of his hips, she rose up and angled his cock so his tip rested against her heat.
Condom.
But this wasn’t his turf. He didn’t have any with him. His supply was back in his bag in the Freshwater Lodge in Fairbanks.
“Condom,” he mouthed.
“I’m fine. Good time of month.” she whispered back. “Last sex was nearly a year ago. All exams good since then. “You?”
“All good.” Sex without a condom…that didn’t happen very often in his life. Even Milena the Belarusian spy had insisted on protection every time, and thank God for that.
If this one time resulted in pregnancy…well, maybe it was meant to be, was all he could think as her body enclosed his erection in warm, muscular tightness. And that was his last coherent thought for a while.
She came first, covering her mouth with her own hand, smothering her cry into nothing more than a squeak. He held himself back as long as he could to keep his focus on her. But her flushed face and swelling nipples, not to mention the squeeze of her orgasm around his cock, sent him on his own rocket ride a moment later.
He clenched his jaw tight so he wouldn’t let out the shout that wanted to break free. Pumping his hips up, up, into her channel, didn’t quite give him everything he needed, so he flipped her over, pinned her arms to the side, and ravaged her that way. The dew of sweat on her face, the sexy satisfied haze in her midnight eyes, the scent of sleep clinging to her, all of it added to a climax that blew his world apart.
And then she brought it back together again with her sweet kisses while he panted on the bed next to her.
“We were quiet, weren’t we?” she whispered.
“I didn’t hear a thing. I think I went deaf and blind for a minute there. I was in another world.”
She smiled at him, her face so flushed and relaxed, her eyes so starry, that he never wanted the moment to end.
But like all moments, it did. A shout came from the living room, the yowling of cats, then the noise of something clattering to the floor.
Maura sat bolt upright. “Pinky?” she called. “Are you okay?”
A stream of curse words was the only response she got. She scrambled over him and pulled on a plush set of pajamas and a pair of fuzzy slippers, then disappeared out the door.
He took a moment longer to pull on his clothes, so by the time he joined them, Pinky was sitting upright on the floor, holding an ice pack to his head.
“What happened?”
“He had a scare.” Maura looked a little spooked herself.
A chill swept through him. “Not another…?”
She shook her head quickly. “No. He thinks there was a lynx in the house.”
“There was a lynx in the house,” grumbled Pinky. “It was right there. I was about to stoke the fire, and I opened the window and there he was, staring at me. Right in the eyeballs. Looking like he had no idea where he was.”
“Are you saying he was in the woodstove?” Maura asked incredulously.
“Yah, that’s where he was. He jumped out at me and I stumbled trying to get away from him and fell down. Hit my head on something, not sure what.”
“I think it was the tea kettle,” Maura said as she grabbed it off the floor, where it lay on its side. She couldn’t see any of the cats; they must be in hiding. The Newfie was on his feet, looking very confused.
“Reminded me of the old days when Jeanine used to get mad at me and throw things.” Pinky pulled the ice pack away to feel his lump. “Where’d that damn lynx go?”
“Pinky, is this one of your pranks? Why would a lynx be inside the stove?”
“Ask him, not me!”
Maura shot Lachlan a pleading, how-do-we-deal-with-this look, but Lachlan had been scoping out the area near the couch, and had an idea about what had happened.
“The wind was coming from the east last night, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the weather side. The big storms always come that way. That’s why I ain’t got no windows that side.”
“So…” Lachlan gingerly opened the front door, which allowed a quantity of fluffy snow to tumble inside. He peered to the east. Just as he’d expected. “The wind piled up the snow against the western wall of the house. It’s like a giant dune. The lynx ran up it as if was a ramp, then climbed in the top of the smoke stack. They can fit into smaller spaces than you think.”
“It has a screen!” said Pinky. “To keep the squirrels out.”
“Maybe it blew off. Anyway, the lynx probably appreciated the shelter. He must have come in this morning once the fire was out. He didn’t seem burned, did he?”
“I didn’t ask and he didn’t say.” Pinky looked at his stove in outrage, as if it had betrayed him. “Me and the lynx, we’re usually good. Out on the trapline, I do everything how I was taught. An Ahtna hunter trained me, old Jim Annis, he still followed the old ways. He wouldn’t say an animal’s name while he was hunting out of respect. The animals are sensitive, he told me. If you don’t show them respect, they won’t let you catch them anymore.” He jumped to his feet, looking around the room. “Shit, where is he now?”
Maura jumped up on the couch with a squeal, as if the lynx was a mouse about to scurry across her feet. Pinky grabbed the poker and brandished it in the air with a yell. Lachlan wished he could take a photo of the chaos, but just then he felt something streak past his legs. He opened the door wider and watched the wild creature pounce into the snow and quickly disappear in a flash of spotted fur and tufted ears.
“Oh my god.” Maura collapsed onto the couch, while Pinky set down the poker and got back to work starting the fire. “I can’t believe we just had a lynx in the house. First a wolf, now a lynx, what is going on with the animals around here?”
Pinky sat back on his heels and stared at her. “Wolf?”
“Yes, I guess I haven’t had a chance to tell you. We had a strange wolf encounter.”
“What color was its coat?”
“Gray, I think.”
“And the eyes?”
“Amber,” said Lachlan, as he returned to the living room, having swept the snow back out the front door. “A deep amber.”
“There’s only one pack of wolves with that type of eye color around here. Most have yellow eyes. That wolf came from the Wind Valley pack.”
Maura exchanged a glance with Lachlan. That sure sounded like confirmation that Wind Valley was the source of the strange animal behavior.
“Do you think the lynx came from Wind Valley too?” she asked Pinky.
“I didn’t have time for chitchat,” he said as he shifted the ice pack. “The lynx go wherever they want.”
“Clearly.” Maura grabbed a whisk broom to clean up the ashes the lynx had disturbed.
“If you want to know more, oughta look at them boxes. The Nutty Professor was watching those wolves. He had cameras set up to record while he wasn’t there. He knew a lot about them.”
“I didn’t realize he studied animals,” said Lachlan.
“Oh, he didn’t. He got interested in them because it was their territory out there in Wind Valley. He’d hear wolf calls. The kiddos would get scared. I think that might be one of the reasons they left, now that I think about it.”
“Because they were afraid of the wolves?” Maura asked.
“No, the opposite. He came to love the wolves. Said he didn’t think it was fair to invade their territory. The last thing he said to me was that a wolf could be trusted more than most people. I got the feeling he was talking about someone specific, but I don’t know who or why. Maybe it’s in those boxes. Just be careful with that lamp, would you? It came from the old copper train that used to come out here.”