The way his eyes lit up when he inspected the shiny, convex surface of the spoon was adorable.
"Look around to your heart's content," I told him. "I'm gonna grab some air. It's too stuffy in here for me."
I strolled out of the cabin and brushed the dust off my body. That place was a disaster. It was a mystery to me now how Remington and Nero had managed to have sex there.
As I waited for Orpheus to finish playing around, a strange sense of unease fell over me. It felt like I was being watched. Instinctively, I wanted to shift into my fox form because my senses were sharper, but I didn't want to draw even more attention to myself. I subtly looked around, scanning the environment. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Was I going crazy?
And then I saw it. At the edge of my peripheral vision, there was motion from a tree. A dark shape shuffled in a high branch.
Before I met Orpheus, I had trouble differentiating a crow from a raven, but now it was obvious to me. Ravens were larger and had a stronger profile and thicker beak, as well as a deeper, hoarser voice. I didn't need to hear that bird to recognize it as a raven. It was massive on the branch and it was staring right at me.
There were tons of mute animals in the wildlife reserve. We ran into them daily. It shouldn't have rubbed me the wrong way to see another raven besides Orpheus. There were many of them in the area, and they were just mute animals, not shifters.
But something about the way this one stared at me made me suspicious. I narrowed my eyes. Was I being overly paranoid?
From this distance, I couldn't read its expression. Sometimes when an animal was close enough, it was clear to see a different sort of intelligence in its eyes that gave it away as a shifter. This raven was too far away. All I knew was that it was staring at me and wouldn't stop.
I grunted and turned back. Whatever it was, I didn't want to be stared at any longer. It didn't move from the branch as I entered the cabin and closed the rickety door behind me.
My sense of unease dissolved when I saw Orpheus standing in the kitchen with an arm full of stainless steel utensils. I crossed my arms and grinned. "Are those for our new kitchen back in the pack?"
Orpheus pouted. "Can I keep them? Please?"
It was all honestly a bunch of junk, but if it made him happy then I didn't have a problem with it. "Sure, but you're gonna have to figure out a way to carry it all."
Orpheus held up a finger, then pulled out a scrap of cloth from the counter. "I found this in one of the rooms. I can use it as a bag."
"Let me sniff it first."
Orpheus gingerly held out the cloth. He probably thought it was weird, but didn't say anything because I was letting him keep a bunch of shiny spoons. I smelled the fabric and thankfully it didn't have any signs of being used by Nero or Remington. I nodded to Orpheus, who excitedly wrapped up his new treasure.
"Okay, now we can go," Orpheus declared. He slung his prize over his shoulder. It bulged in multiple directions and clinked whenever he adjusted his weight or took a step.
"Do you think that's enough spoons?" I teased.
"Not just spoons, my foxy angel," Orpheus said proudly. "There's also some fine forks—those are the sharp pointy things that look like steel twigs, if you're not aware—and—"
I rolled my eyes and grabbed his wrist. "I know what a fork is. Come on."
As I pulled him along, he asked, "What's the hurry?"
I didn't want to tell them about the raven yet. It still felt like I was being paranoid over nothing. I'd heard that pregnancies made you feel wacky sometimes, so I didn't want to jump to conclusions.
"I just want to get away from this dusty cabin," I said.
My gaze gravitated towards the tree that the raven had been sitting in. But now, the branch was empty.
* * *
As we left the cabin,I gradually forgot about the other raven. My mind was too focused on other things, like telling the pack about my fluidity, or if my pregnancy was going to culminate in a cub or an egg, or what the hell we were going to do with three-thousand spoons.
Orpheus hiked the pack over his other shoulder. It jingled loudly with every motion. I stifled a laugh. Even though this collection of stainless steel utensils made him happy, it was still totally ridiculous. And, admittedly, adorable.
"Don't laugh," Orpheus said with a grin. "You're just jealous."
"I can assure you with certainty that I am not."
"I know you think my collection is silly."
