Winter clearly thinks better of that. She blows out another breath. “Okay.” But she sounds like she’s saying it to herself. “Okay is good. More than we got some years. I’ll take it.”
I don’t like it when my friends sound sad, so I eat those feelings. She gets up to fix herself another cup of coffee and looks more alert when she sits back down.
“Another full moon last night,” she murmurs. “Would I be able to tell by looking at you if ...?”
“I don’t actually know,” I tell her. Though I know I’ll have a new tattoo, at the very least. “But no need to worry about what a claiming looks like from the outside, because none took place.”
I guess my attempt to sound jaunty and unbothered falls flat, because she gazes at me a little too intently, those indigo eyes of hers more confronting than I’d like. “Areyouokay?”
I wouldn’t answer anyone else on this. But I was there the night that Winter pretty much died on the top of Mount McLoughlin. There was more than one moment when I thought that I was literally holding her poor, battered body together with my own hands.
I’ve never been a fan of unearned intimacies, but I’m pretty sure this is about as earned as it gets.
“There’s always been a time limit,” I say quietly. “And we’re coming up on it. Fast.”
I expect her to reach for her cards, or to tell me that she dreamed about all the North American wolves who will be appearing shortly in Jacksonville, or the power of the solstice, all the usual oracle things. Instead, all she does is study me. Like I need some figuring out.
I don’t like that, so I keep talking. “I’m sure it will be fine. After all, I was fated to be his mate, not his victim. So I have that going for me.”
“Do you really think that he would kill you?” Winter asks, after failing yet again to smile at my attempt to lighten things up.
Again, this is not a question I would answer if anyone else dared put it to me. But this is Winter. Her boyfriend is an immortal vampire. They share blood.
In comparison, Ty and I are nowhere near as toxic. We’re relatively healthy as fuck.
I wave a hand. “At this point I’m less worried about Ty and more worried about other douchebag wolves thinking they can step to him because they imagine there’s some weakness in us not being fully mated.”
“Is there?” Winter asks, her gaze a little too heavy on mine.
“No,” I say, automatically. Maybe a little defensively. “No, of course not. It’s about the perceived weakness they assume must lurk in Ty because he hasn’t put me in my place. That’s the only strength they recognize. And it’s not that I think he can’t take them if they try to fight him, because he can. He will. But it will be a whole thing, and guess who they’ll all blame?”
Winter nods and drains her coffee, but even after she leaves the kitchen so she can head off to her coffee stand on Stage Road, I find myself turning what she told me—and asked me—over and over in my head.
I do my dishes, and virtuously do Briar’s, too, because that’s the kind of giving person I am when I’m feeling aggrieved. I tell myself it’s nothing less than a goddamn olive branch toward an incarcerated goddess’s intended victim when really, it’s an empty cereal bowl.
I push my way back out into the yard. It’s still cold, and the fog is clinging on for dear life. I let my gaze move over the old vegetable garden pen, long since gone to seed. At this time of year, the pen and the yard itself are little more than mud. The evergreens keep the woods that press in around the house from looking too bare, and I like that. I missed these cool winters of green and gray when I lived back east.
I breathe in, scenting the air, but can’t smell anything or anyone out of the ordinary.
Not that I would expect to. As I once told Winter, my moving onto her land pretty much guaranteed that the pack would keep it safe. Savi renting a cottage here practically catapulted this whole hill into sanctuary status. Winter being the oracle and the consort of the vampire king means it’s even safer here now.
Who would want to take on all three major powers in this valley at once?
Though now I find myself wondering if that will change once wolf week starts and all the asshole kings from the other irritating packs start throwing their weight around.
I brood on that as I head back to my cottage and get ready for the rest of my day. I want to take that glorious leap forward into the woods, shifting as I go, but I don’t. If I run the way I want to, I’ll almost certainly be late.
The day after another unclaimed full moon is not the day to be late. Tempers are sure to be high as it is.
I trudge out to the big old Explorer I’ve been driving since high school and climb in, then head down the hill. I drive down the main street of pretty, preserved Jacksonville, the human safe zone. It’s still early, so there’s no one around. This means I can look at the old buildings, strung with lights that remind me it’s December today. And that this is the holiday season, no matter what folks celebrate.
There used to be carolers on the streets, dressed in period costumes. Maybe there still are. I’ll have to remember to come and see for myself if they’re doing it again this year. You never know. The chorus group could have been eaten.
Though I know perfectly well that one thing I will not have much of over the next few weeks is time. Not with the wolf packs gathering here and the role I’ll have to play for them, hopefully helping to ward off any runs at Ty before they happen.
I take the road out of town, down Stage Road and past Winter’s coffee stand, where there are already cars backed up. I roll down my windows despite the chilly wind so I can smell the remains of the moonlight on the acres of abandoned farmland that spread out on both sides of the road, slowly going back to the earth. I can pick up the faint scents of those who ran last night on the breeze.
I feel the need to run free inside me like claws.
