A blow in return. I deserve it.
I understand that if I don’t do something about this, right now, we will stand here in this exact spot and repeat this. Over and over. Fuck and fight. Fuck and almost reach some kind of understanding—but no. Fuck again. Fight again.
But if I could do that, we wouldn’t be here right now, would we?
I give him the actual finger this time, on top of the figurative middle finger he thinks my living situation is. “You first,” I suggest.
This time, when he laughs, it’s a warning.
I heed it. I turn and run. All the way to the steep side of the hill, and I can hear him behind me, moving fast.
I jump, and I shift midair, and when I land on the slick, steep hillside, I haul ass on four legs all the way home.
When I make it through the woods to that pretty little hill in Jacksonville, my cottage waits for me. It’s nestled into the trees on the edge of the big front yard outside the oracle’s house. I left the lights on to welcome me home, and once I’m in the yard—once I see them—I pause.
I take a breath, but when I scan all around me, Ty’s nowhere. I can’t even scent him on the wind.
I know that he let me run all this way. Let me beat him.
I know, too, that this is another example of his trust in me.
Yet I also know that no matter how much I wish it could be, it’s not enough.
4.
Cold Moon, waning gibbous
It’s a relief to wake up alone the next morning.
A relief that makes me feel guilty immediately, but that doesn’t change it any. After a full-on pack night, I like my own space. I like my own company. I like getting to wake up in my own bed, in my own room, where all I can hear is the wind in the trees outside.
New York City ruined den life for me, but that’s another conversation that starts fights I’m tired of having.
I’ve been renting this little cottage for about two months now and expected to enjoy the reprieve from pack politics every time I open my eyes, but it turns out I like it a whole lot more than that.
There was a lot of talk when Winter Bishop, who the Kind knew was going to be the next oracle long before she did, put out an ad for renters. Just went ahead and put it out there in the cute little newspaper that the humans distribute around to each other but that all the rest of us read too.
We still like to keep tabs on them. Old habits die hard.
There had been a lot of talk about which factions should make a run at getting in with the new oracle, but unlike most of them, I knew Winter from high school. So I was the one who nominated myself for the role, showed up on her doorstep, and won myself—and the pack—an in.
And unlike the other two renters who turned up that day to claim the oracle’s three cottages, Winter knew exactly who and whatIwas.
Not a powerful sorceress in hiding like Savi Wynn, making the weather do what she likes. Not whatever the hell Briar Monroe is, who smells a bit like a dark fae but with indistinguishable magic that is distinctlynotfae-like. I was the only one not hiding in plain sight.
Maybe that’s why Winter and I became friends. Not just people who share a kitchen.
I roll out of bed. Unlike a number of my family members who like to sleep on the cold, hard ground because it’sletting the wolf lead, I like a cozy bed. I shower in my tiny bathroom, get dressed, and head outside into the crack of a new dawn.
It’s cold this morning and I like it. I can see my breath as I walk, which delights me the same way it did when I was small. The fog—natural, I’m pretty sure, not Savi’s work, because it’s always foggy in the mornings at this time of the year in Oregon—swirls around the pines and the madrone trees. It makes my walk across the front yard seem spooky. My feet crunch into the earth beneath me as I head toward the house that’s belonged to the Rogue Valley oracle for as long as I can remember.
If anyone needed a prophecy—or a little glimpse into the future, maybe not so fancy as a whole-ass prophecy and all that might entail—everyone knew that you come up to the window around the side of this house, hand over money or goods, depending, and the wrinkled old oracle who sat in a chair by her window would show you what you wanted to see.
Or what you really didn’t want to see, depending on how her cards fell.
I can’t think of a single creature around who didn’t end up here at some point or another.
The old oracle was Winter’s grandmother and she died a month ago, killed in the big fight we had against the lovely and charming Vinca and her bloodthirsty acolytes. I’d grown to like the spooky old lady, and even though I didn’t spend much time in the house proper while she was alive, I can feel her absence now.
