Winter makes a frustrated sort of noise, but she doesn’t argue. “It feels like things are ramping up,” she says after moment. “Like it did before Halloween. Except worse this time, because I have no idea what’s going on.”
I nod. “I hear you.”
“I don’t even know what’s going on with my brother.” Her voice is lower, but her gaze is stricken when she turns to me. “Do you? You said he was okay, butishe? Have you even seen him since he went into whatever the fuck werewolf detox is?”
I don’t take the accusation in her tone personally. It’s like the two-body thing. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have the power she does and to accept that she has those powers only after a series of upsetting events—only for them to be taken away. Or diminished, anyway.Muddied.
Of course hearing howling in the hills and thinking about Halloween is going to have her even more worried about her twin than usual. He’s the only family she has left.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I tell her, evenly. “When I go back up to the den, I’m going to go see him myself. You’re right, I haven’t visited. It’s not the kind of place and he’s almost certainly not in the kind of state that lends itself to visitors, though. You need to know that.”
“I know detox is terrible. Of course I know that.”
“This is different,” I say. As carefully as I can. “Because it’s a blood addiction. It’s not the drugs you’re thinking about. Drugs are bad enough, I grant you, but there’s magic involved with this.” I blow out a breath and say the other part. “No one’s ever actually done this before.”
“What? Ty said that he could do it!” Her eyes are wide, and for a moment she looks the way I remember her from grade school, a long time ago. A little girl. An innocent.
The way we all were, once.
“If anyone can, Ty can,” I say loyally, though I also happen to believe it. “He knows how to do it, theoretically. But that doesn’t mean that your brother will let him. Okay?”
Winter lets out a breath that sounds more ragged than before, but she doesn’t cry. I can’t remember ever seeing her cry, not even when we were kids. Then again, I’m not big on crying either. “I’m sorry I asked. But ... I would like to know how he is.”
“I got you,” I promise her.
Though I find I’m feeling a lot less pleased with myself when she gets back into her truck and drives away, leaving me there with too many things left to fix. And what feels like very little time to do it.
12.
Wolf Moon, waxing crescent
I keep my word.
I go back up to the den with all my queens in tow that day, and I spend the evening with them. Not only for diplomatic reasons. I like them. We have more in common than we don’t. Making these connections is supposed to be the point of these gatherings.
“It never hurts to have sympathetic ears in a number of different packs,” my mother murmurs later that night, immediately making me feel ... gross.
“Not everything is strategy,” I mutter.
She whips her head around to spear me with one of thoselooksof hers. The firelight makes her look even more fierce than usual, all those shadows and hollows on her face.
“It should be.” Johanna snaps that out like she can’t believe I said such a thing. “Why are you incapable of remembering your position, Maddox? Even now?”
I do remember my position. That’s why I bite back the response I’d like to make, because we’re in public. Nothing instills less confidence in a leader—or a future leader—than watching said leader have a fight with her mom. So I keep it together. I say nothing.
Privately, of course, I seethe—though I let Ty help me work out my tension later when he finds me curled up in his bed.
The next morning I wake up early and sneak out through the private entrance that we used yesterday.
I don’t want anyone to see me on this errand. Not that I would care too much if it was my own pack, but I don’t want to explain what’s happening with Augie Bishop to any of the other packs. They already don’t like the fact that I seem to have all these relationships with non-wolves. They have a lot of opinions about what I do and where I live and all the rest of it. It’s fine to skulk around human towns like species tourists, apparently—but actually living with them? Getting along with them? They don’t like that at all.
They definitely won’t like the fact that Ty is trying to help one of them. Especially not when what he’s trying to help Augie with is a nasty blood addiction. It’s not like the general werewolf population is all that fond of vampires, either.
Once outside, I breathe in the stillness. Everything feels hushed around me as I start off, heading away from the den and going much deeper into the forest—up higher into the mountains. An old mining track that humans used to transport water to the mine runs a ways into the woods, some thirty miles or so, and used to be a fairly popular hike. It’s overgrown now, but wolves love that. The wilder the better.
I navigate my way along the old mine ditch trail for a while, enjoying the wet, green morning and the fog that teases its way in and around the trees.
I know where I’m going in a general sense, but I still have to look for the turnoff as I get closer. It’s a little mark on the side of a perfectly unexceptional tree in a particularly wily patch of underbrush. It would look like nothing at all to anyone who couldn’t also scent our pack in the marking.
