Her hand hovered an inch above his fur, and his wolf bopped his head on her palm, trying to be playful. As soon as their skin met, he got a bright flash of her doing this exact thing to a tiny wolf’s head with the same color fur as his.
She staggered away, and he blinked dazedly, feeling like he did in the moments after a shift, like his entire psyche wasn’t aligned right.
The wolf shook as if it was sopping wet as she curled her hands around the counter behind her, eyes wide.
What was that? Did he just have a vision? How?
She opened her mouth, and he held his breath, waiting for what she would have to say about that, but she snapped her jaw closed with a click of teeth and shook her head.
“We have to find those kids.”
This time, she didn’t hesitate as she gripped the fur on the top of his head a little too firmly, and he resisted the urge to pull away. He was rewarded when she gentled her touch and looked down.
“Could you, um, step over there? Not that I’m telling you what to do!”
The wolf briefly raised a metaphorical eyebrow at him, and he reassured it that the bizarre contraptions he’d made were going to help it.
The wolf had long experience watching endless and incomprehensible code flow over computer screens, not to mention all the other bizarre projects he’d concocted over the years. It brought to mind a tiny robot for a club in school that played an extremely inefficient game of water polo. The thing could float, propel itself forward, and it had one little arm that batted in one direction.Ridiculouswas his wolf’s general opinion on any of its human’s inventions, but it stepped willinglyenough onto four twisted piles of branches and was shocked to find that they didn’t hurt its paws.
Of course, I wouldn’t do that to you. You don’t think I know what the ground feels like under your paws?
The beast didn’t answer but focused on the woman who shuffled more branches over his claws.
Pick up your paw,he said, and the beast did, fighting the urge to rip them off.
You’re going to like them,Mateo thought triumphantly as Cat pulled the door open, and they slipped out of the cabin that had saved their lives.
She swung the door almost shut and used a rope he’d rigged to the box behind it to pull it flush since the latch was still broken.
He braced for her to step off the porch, but she just looked out into the morning. The light was still dim; the clouds were heavy, but the snow had stopped, and Mateo was aware of the profound silence. Not even the wolf could hear anything stirring. All other animals were intelligently staying where they’d burrowed for the blizzard.
She snapped on her own snowshoes, but instead of starting out, she closed her eyes.
“I think we can go that way,” she said as she pointed away from the cabin. “I wish it was sunny. It’s impossible to tell angles in my vision with the clouds, but there’s slightly more light on one side than the other.”
He just nodded and urged the wolf forward, but the beast stopped at the edge of the porch, eyeing the snow drifts.
Just try it,he thought firmly but confidently.
The beast sent him flashes of the struggle to get to the cabin, mostly in visions of thick snow.
Just do it!he said with a little more firmness.
He didn’t love playing the dictator, but the wolf was too strong to allow for anything else.
It took a tentative step forward and did not sink into the snow. It yanked its foot back and shuddered.
“It’s okay!” Cat said, noticing their trouble, like she was talking to a puppy with anxiety and not an alpha werewolf. “You can do it.”
The wolf was so offended that she would think it was incapable that it dashed right out into the snow, plowing into a bank in seconds.
Then it panicked that it was stuck and reared backwards, sending a shower of snow over her as she laughed.
“Gently,” she said as the wolf climbed back onto the porch like the boards were the deck of a lake.
The wolf sent him image after image of getting stuck, freezing, and dying.
You heard her,he said, content for her to be the carrot. He was amused at the wolf’s fear. He hadn’t experienced it in years. It was the master of every domain it entered and knew it, but they had graphic proof that one wrong move could kill them out here, and the wolf was not coping.Maybehis dismissiveness wasn’t helping. He wasn’t used to having to coax.
