Lyrical. Creative. Wildly athletic.
Better yet, he always wins.
“He always fucking wins,” I whisper to myself, fiercely, as I scan the trees above me for any lurking banshees. Kind of wishing one might come at me so I coulddosomething with all the sharp, jangly energy inside me.
I’m daydreaming a little bit at this point, thinking of banshees and Ty and fighting andwinning—
Maybe this is why it takes me a moment or two to recognize the way the hair on the back of my neck is prickling. Another alarm, and this one for a much closer danger.
Not banshees this time.
I don’t change my pace. I don’t look around. But I am positive just the same. I canfeelit, everywhere.
Something is watching me, malevolent andfocused.
As I move, I can feel it move, too.
I keep walking, and I decide that it doesn’t feel like that darkness that chased me to Savi’s house. This feels smaller, but still deadly. Less catastrophic weather shift and more stalker.
It feels the way Winter’s vision sounded. I inhale, but all I smell are wolves. Lots of wolves. This is the main path to the den, and we’re at the end of a gathering week. Every wolf here has left scent behind.
Traitor,I think.
Not a death goddess, but a wolf. A wolf I know, or I would find an odd scent in the mix. Maybe after I make it through the solstice, I’ll have to unpack all the levels of what it means that one of my own people could do these things—but I have to live through today first.
Right now, I’m out here in the woods with no one around and a traitor on my heels. A traitor who’s a little overly interested in me. I see Winter’s vision in my head as if it’s mine, and I don’t like it.
On the other hand, I do like my chances with most wolves. With every wolf except Ty, as a matter of fact. I’m not fated to be his queen because I’m weak and slow.
Sure, if this was a wide-open field, I might worry. But it’s a forest. Nothing chasing me is going to corner as well as I do, and it’s unlikely that another wolf has as much riding on tonight as I do. There’s no possible way.
I don’t shift forms. I keep sauntering along, and as I go, I feel the presence get closer. I can feel the hatred like mist all over me. It moves closer still.
I keep myself from tensing up. I tell myself to keep my breathing even. I don’t want whoever is tracking me to have the slightest idea that I’m aware of them or that I think I’m anything but alone.
I know this old trail as well as if I cleared it myself. I’m approaching a narrow turn that I know leads down beneath an old felled tree trunk propped up across the path against a big rock. It creates a kind of natural tunnel, and if I were going to jump someone, that’s where I’d do it.
I make myself keep walking, seemingly oblivious. I can feel the tension in the air. I can almost scent the stalker behind me. It’salmostthere. I can almost pull in a deep-enough sample of the scent signature that I should be able to identify the wolf in question—
But not quite.Not quite.
I start to take the turn, and I hear footsteps quicken behind me—
Let’s fucking go,I think, and I get ready to shift—
At the same moment, two of the younger wolf queens with their cubs in tow come barreling out of the tunnel from the other direction.
We all comethis closeto a full collision. I avoid mowing them over with sheer force of will.
The little cublings squeal with joy at the near miss, bounding around and barking at everything. Rocks. Beetles. Me.
“So sorry.” Rhiannon laughs, trying to corral her little wild ones, seemingly oblivious to how dazed I must look, because I sure feel it. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. “We’re on a mission to get these wiggles out.”
“They’re absolute monsters,” confides the other young queen, shaking her head. “Devils, every one of them.”
By the time they corral all the children and get them heading off along the path again, whatever was on my heels—about to attack—is gone.
Taking any chance I had to finally figure out their identity with them.
