There’s not much that could make me more uneasy.
I don’t want to touch the sacrifice, but I don’t want to leave it out here, either. I also don’t really feel like picking it up with my mouth, my only option in this form. I switch back to my human form and clean up as best I can, burying what’s left of the poor creature in the woods.
Once I’m done, I don’t really feel like going back and sitting there in my cottage. Not only because someone clearly wants me to know thattheyknow I live there. I would say every last member of the Kind, not to mention vast swaths of what remains of the human population, knows I live here on Winter’s land.
Knowing where I live in a general sense is no big deal. That’s life in a small town. Feeling confident enough to leave whole bloody messes on my doorstep in two separate locations, on the other hand, feels less adorably rural Oregon and more ... upsetting.
Out in the woods, I stay crouched down over the grave I dug and realize that with all the full moon drama, I never told Ty about that skunk. It’s not great that now another grisly little offering has turned up. The very next night, in fact.
Once again, I find myself thinking about those cloaked little horrors who followed Vinca around. I shake my head at the gnarled madrone tree before me, because I know it can’t be them. Visions of Briar possibly being a potential target aside, Winter is the one who had the most intense connection to the death goddess. If Vinca was still actually out here kicking around and making noise from her watery prison, Winter would know.
More to the point, she would knowandshe would tell the rest of us.
When lecturing myself on this topic doesn’t work, I head back toward the cottages, though I stay inside the boundary of the woods. Keeping myself in the shadows and letting the early December night fall inky and hard around me.
Just in case anyone is hanging around, unscentable for some reason, and watching.
I can’t scent Briar in her cottage, which matches the tracks she left on her way down the hill. Everything seems to suggest that Saviisin hercottage, though when I knock on the back window, there’s no answer. There’s not even a hitch in the murmuring I hear from within.
It takes me about two seconds to decide that it’s her usual sorcery games at work. Savi is one of the most powerful people around. She’s not killing time in a tiny cottage here on a hill in Jacksonville, no matter what she wants Winter to think.
Luckily, I know where she really lives.
And my body is desperate to get out there andrun, so that feels like a plan.
I start off at a jog, still on two feet. I wait as I pick up speed. I go faster and faster, and when I get to the top of a small gorge, I jump.
Iexplodeinto my wolf form.
Then I let her run free.
I head up into the mountains, taking the long way over and around them as I make my way toward Ashland. I can sense pack in the distance, but I don’t stop. I’ve had enough pack today, thank you.
The deeper I get into the wilderness, where very few humans have ever ventured, the better I feel. Just me and the places my paws take me, places only paws can go. These mountains have sheltered me most of my life, and I know them like friends. I see the marks of fires over the years, downed trees from winter storms, the shifting map of age and time.
Up high, there’s already considerable snow, and it makes everything even better, crisp and clean and cold enough that even I can feel it.
I wish Ty was with me, because I know that he loves the snow. When he can actually enjoy it and even play in it a little bit. Something he’ll never do with anyone but me.
Another secret I keep from my family and the pack. Secrets about the man Ty is when he doesn’t have to be their king. Secrets that belong to the two of us whether they like it—or me—or not.
It really is easier to miss him when he’s not with me—not because I don’t love him but because everything about him is sobig. He fills the space, any space, so intensely that I always feel I have to fight againstit. It alwayslookslike fighting him, I know, no matter what it is I think I’m trying to do.
Up on this mountain in the starlight, away from everything, I can hear myself think.
And what I think is that I’m really fucking tired of fighting Ty.
I stop moving, finding my way to the top of a large boulder so I can take in the sweeping view of this valley I’ve never been able to put behind me. Not for long. Certainly not for good. It’s dark, but I can see the lights here and there, marking everything from human encampments to Kind parties and what looks like the odd goblin ball. Up above, the stars are heralding the rising of the moon.
It’s quiet up here, but not still. The wind picks up, and that feels good too as it ruffles my fur.
The Wolf Moon is coming, and so are the other North American packs. Reality is crashing in on me, but I knew that it would. It always does. Maybe, if the Reveal hadn’t happened when it did, I would have had more time to make a case for myself as an independent wolf whoalsohappens to be the king’s mate.
Maybe,I tell myself,that will be a lesson you save for your daughter.
And for a while, I can’t tell if what I feel inside of me is grief ... or hope.
I don’t know how long I sit here, making myself a part of the rock beneath me. Or how long I would have stayed here, but something changes.
