Moonbright

Chapter 23

Itchy.

Under the skin where I can't scratch—not nerves, not muscle, deeper than that. My ribs are restless. There's a hum behind my breastbone that won't quiet down.

Oh.

Right. Not me.

Eyes still closed, breathing fine. The hum keeps going—steady, underneath mine.

Wolf-thread.

Going to take some getting used to. Someone else's pulse in my chest while I'm trying to wake up.

He's somewhere. Ahead of me. Across the clearing or past it.

The hum doesn't tell me direction so much as occupied.

I open my eyes to dim light. The smell of him deep in the furs.

I sit up slow. The wrapping on my collarbone pulls against the cut, tight and clean—Kestria's work, neat tension, the knot tucked. I touch it once. Fine.

Empty pallet. Empty room. A clay cup of water on the low ledge by the door, set there sometime before he left, and I push off the bed and drink it standing. Same clothes from yesterday. Blood on the sleeve, dark and dry.

Through the door, into the cold.

The clearing is pre-dawn gray. Smoke smell still in the air from the night fires, banked low now. A wolf at the woodpile lifts his head when I step out of Keer's dwelling. Sees me, sees where I'm coming from, goes back to the wood.

I walk south. The goats are penned at the edge of the clearing. The female is awake at the rail, ears pricked. The male is asleep in the corner.

She makes a sound when she sees me. Not a bleat. A complaint.

"I know."

I haven't milked her in two days. Three, maybe. The poisoning, the cottage, the—yesterday. All of it.

"Sorry, lady."

She doesn't accept the apology.

Dara is already at the next station over—gloves on, mortar set up, working a fresh batch. She doesn't look up.

"You look terrible."

"Thank you. I can always count on you for the sweetest compliments."

"Did you sleep?"

"Some."

The pestle keeps moving. The smell of crushed moonbright drifts over—sharp, sweet, scratching the back of my throat. She's running a stronger batch than usual. My paste rotation's going to need rebalancing.

I lean my forehead against the goat's flank. She's warm. Coarse hair, the dense heat of her ribs. She shifts her weight to accommodate me.

Hands. Bucket.

The first stream hits the bottom, then the second. The sound is so specific—wood and milk. I haven't heard it in days.

She leans her shoulder against mine. Settled. Patient.

I shift on the stool. My hand lifts from her udder to her side, just resting, while I switch.

Movement.

Under my palm.

I freeze.

A second one. Distinct. A small body kicking against the wall of her side, right under where my hand is.

Oh.

"Dara."

"Yeah."

"She's pregnant."

The grinding stops.

"Yeah."

I look up. Dara is watching me. The pestle in her gloved hand, paused.

"...you knew?"

"We've known for a few days. I figured someone would have told you. Or you'd have caught it. You usually—" She stops. Picks a different word. "I figured you knew."

I don't say anything.

The kick again, soft, against my palm.

I would have known. I always know.

The gray hen stopped laying for two days and I had her on supplemental grain before the sun had set.

The spotted goat went off her right hind for half a morning and I caught the limp before she limped.

Nugget went off her grain for one feeding once and I sat with her for an hour because something was wrong.

I always know.

"Mel. You good?"

She's looking at me, eyes steady.

"Yeah."

She gives me a small nod. Goes back to the paste.

I move my hand back to the udder. The goat doesn't notice. Or she does and she's too polite to comment.

"How far along is she?"

"Hard to tell." Dara's pestle picks up again. "Few weeks out, maybe. The spotted one's further along—she'll probably go first. Brown one a little after."

"Three babies."

"Yup." Dara doesn't look up.

I keep milking. The goat leans into me, settled, patient, the warm weight of her against my shoulder, and my hand stays on her side longer than it needs to.

Voices at the north edge.

Not loud.

I set the bucket aside.

"Dara."

"I see them."

"Keep working."

I stand. Halfway there, Nugget is at my ankle. I don't know when she joined. I don't ask. She has opinions about being included.

Petra is at the front of the gathering.

I find her first. The rest comes into focus around her—packs, bedrolls, a few faces I half-know. Her daughter on her hip, face tucked into her neck. The strap of her pack digging into her shoulder.

She sees me coming.

"Melori."

"Petra."

"I wanted to find you before we—"

"You don't have to."

"I do." She shifts her daughter's weight. "You stayed. With us. When you didn't have to."

"Petra—"

"I won't forget that."

Her eyes are wet but the crying already happened. Somewhere I wasn't.

The little girl peeks out from behind her mother's hair. Sees me. Lifts her hand—small fingers opening and closing.

I wave back.

Keer is here. Not next to me—across the gathering, arms at his sides, watching.

A man steps out of the cluster of his family. Broad shoulders. Walks up to Keer with his chin up, hands tight at his sides, bracing.

"We're not cowards."

Keer says nothing.

"We're not." The man's voice cracks on the second word. "But I have a daughter. A son. I won't watch them—"

He stops.

The clearing has stopped breathing.

"Say something." He steps closer. "Curse us. Tell us we're abandoning the pack. Tell us we're—"

Nobody moves. Some of the wolves want Keer to call the man a coward. I can feel it.

He doesn't.

"I'm not going to stop you."

The man doesn't move. For a second I think he didn't hear it. Then his shoulders drop—all at once—and he just stands there breathing.

Keer waits. Doesn't soften it, doesn't repeat it. Just lets him have the moment to understand.

The man nods. Once. Then again, smaller, mostly to himself. Walks back to his family without a word.

Petra is already gathering the children.

The boy first, hand on the back of his neck, steering him north.

The daughter on her hip, still watching me.

The man falls in behind them, one hand at Petra's lower back—not guiding, just touching, the way you do when you need to confirm someone's still there.

They move into the trees slow at first. Then faster, once the cover takes them.

Petra doesn't look back. The daughter does. Small fingers opening and closing over her mother's shoulder, eyes on me until the green swallows her.

I wave back until the trees take them.

Keer breathes out. Long. Quiet.

The clearing is quiet. The wolves who stayed are looking at the ground, at the fire, at their own hands. Not at each other. Not at Keer.

I walk over to where he hasn't moved.

"That was the right thing."

Nothing.

"Keer."

"I know what it was, Melori."

"Then why do you look like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you just lost something you can't get back."

His eye finds mine. Raw.

Then it's gone.

"Because I did."

He turns and walks toward the defense positions.

I watch him go. My hand finds my own collarbone, the wrap, the cut underneath.

Nugget is still at my ankle. Hasn't moved.

I look down at her.

"Yeah," I tell her. "I know."

I stand there for a beat after Keer's gone. The wolves are rearranging—drifting back toward their stations, the woodpile, the fire pit. Nobody talking.

I should go back to the goat. The bucket is half full. The female will need the second side stripped or she'll be uncomfortable later.

Instead I look at the chicken pen.

The eggs.

That's the next thing I know how to do. The pack ate through what I gathered yesterday and there'll be more this morning if I go now. The hens lay early.

It's a reason.

"Come on."

Nugget hops off my boot. Falls in behind me at her usual two-step lag—technically following, reserving the right to pretend she wasn't. I head for the pen.

The hens are out already, scratching in the dirt at the edge of the run. There's a depression in the dust where Keer Jr. has been rolling.

He does that. I have no theories about why.

He's not in it now.

I duck under the rail. The hens flutter and resettle. Routine. The brown one closest to the perch lifts her tail at me without looking up—she's the meanest of them, but she lays the biggest eggs, so we have an arrangement. I reach under her.

Egg. Warm. I tuck it into the crook of my arm.

Second hen. Egg.

Third—

Keer Jr. screams.

Shit.

He sees me.

I straighten up just in time to see him round the corner of the pen at full charge—wings out, beak open, beady eyes focused on the human who has dared to enter his domain. This is his routine.

I have a routine for it. The routine is brace, wait for the impact, kick him sideways with the side of my boot.

I brace.

Nugget steps in front of me.

Keer Jr. stops.

Not slows. Stops. All at once. His feet skid in the dirt, his wings fly out wider, his head snaps back. He freezes a few inches from her, bug-eyed, beak still open.

Nugget doesn't move.

She's standing with her usual perfect posture—pink-tinged, slightly dusty, head tilted, deciding whether he's interesting or beneath her. Mostly beneath. Everything is beneath her.

She blinks.

Keer Jr. doesn't blink.

He stays exactly where he stopped.

"...are you okay?"

Nothing. He doesn't even register me.

He's just staring at her. Whole body locked.

Nugget gets bored. Goes back to scratching at the dirt by my boot.

Keer Jr. doesn't move.

I reach for the third egg. Slowly. Crime-scene slow. The hen doesn't notice me. Keer Jr. doesn't notice me. He has not moved a feather since Nugget stepped in front of me. Nugget is studying him. He could be a piece of furniture she's not sure about and might have to move later.

Egg. I tuck it into the crook of my arm with the others.

Three eggs.

I duck back under the rail.

Look back.

Nugget is still standing exactly where she was. Keer Jr. has shuffled half a step closer to her, trying very hard not to be noticed shuffling. His wings are still half-out. His tail feathers—the long ones he uses for screaming and aggression—are lowering. I've never seen them do that.

Nugget tolerates this.

She doesn't move toward him. She doesn't move away. She just stands there in the dust. Allowing it on the condition that he never speaks.

"Aww!"

It comes out before I can stop it. Hands still full of eggs, frozen mid-step, watching a rooster lose his mind over my chicken.

"My chicken has a boyfriend!"

Keer Jr.'s head snaps up.

Right. Voice. Movement. Me.

The trance breaks. He takes a step at me, wings flaring out from his body, that specific puffed-up I am very large and very angry posture I have seen many, many times—

Nugget steps in front of me again.

Wings out. Same posture. Mirror image. And she screeches at him—the exact pitch and venom he uses on every single member of this pack, returned with interest, right into his face.

Keer Jr. stops.

I watch it happen in real time. The wings come down first, slow, like he's not sure they're his. The puffed-up chest deflates. His head tilts—not the threat tilt, not the calculating one, a different tilt, one I have never seen him do—and he just looks at her.

Looks.

Like he's never seen a chicken before.

His feet do a small shuffle in the dirt. Forward. Back. Forward again, smaller. He doesn't know what to do with himself.

Nugget holds her ground. Ferocious. Unmoved.

Keer Jr. makes a soft sound I have never heard out of him. Not a crow. Not a screech. Something low and bewildered.

Oh my god.

A laugh comes up out of me before I know it's coming. Quiet, a little broken, the first one since—.

Nugget glances back at me. Handled.

"Yeah," I tell her. "You sure did, girl."

I cross the clearing back toward the goats with three eggs in the crook of my arm.

Dara is still at her station. Gloved, working, the second batch nearly set. She looks up when I get close enough. Eggs first. Then my face.

"What."

"Nugget has a husband now."

"What?"

"Keer Jr. He's smitten. He fell over."

"He fell over."

"Metaphorically. Spiritually. He has gone to a place none of us can reach him."

Dara stares at me.

"...Mel, I genuinely cannot tell if you're joking."

"Neither can I." I set the eggs down on the cloth I keeps for them. "But I'm going to need you to handle the rooster's emotional development because I am at capacity."

"Noted."

"Add it to the list of things I am at capacity for."

I sit down on the stool. The goat is still where I left her. She makes a sound at me—the same complaint as before, slightly more aggrieved—and I lean my forehead against her flank for a second because she's warm and I haven't finished.

Three babies. A boyfriend for Nugget. Petra's daughter waving until the trees took her.

I switch sides—bucket, hands, the rhythm of it.

The second side strips clean. The female sighs and shifts her weight. I scratch under her jaw before I stand.

The sun is up properly now. The clearing is awake. Wolves moving through their morning—somebody's children at the woodpile, somebody else stoking the fire pit, the goat on the far side of the pen calling for grain.

I pick up the bucket.

Footsteps on the path.

A body pushing through the trees too hard, unsteady.

Wolves stopping mid-task. Heads turning toward the north path.

Dara is on her feet.

The runner breaks through the tree line.

He's one of ours—younger, lean, one of the scouts Keer sent out after Brennan came in. His face is white. Chest heaving.

His mouth opens.

Keer is already moving toward him—across the camp in long fast strides, the bond hum waking up under my ribs as he does it, sharp now, urgent.

The runner pulls a breath.

"THEY'RE HERE."