"That's not wolf."
The wind moves in the pines.
Far off, two miles east, three men whose scents are still in my nose run on a ridge.
Dean does not say what it is. He does not have a name for it. He looks at me with the same steel-gray eyes he has had on mesince I woke up in this cabin and he tells me the one thing he can be sure of, which is the thing he is.
"That's not wolf."
I close my mouth.
I look at my hands.
I do not say anything for a long moment.
Then I look up at Dean.
"I want to go back inside."
He puts his hand at the small of my back to guide, and we walk back toward the porch. The four scorch-prints from Thaw are still in the dirt. I step over them. The boards under my feet are the boards the men dropped their clothes on. The four piles are still there.
Dean closes the door behind us and slides the bolt.
He sets the rifles on the table.
He does not call for the pack. He does not push the bond. He does not run for the folder.
He pours me a glass of water and he sits down at the table across from me and he waits with me until the men come home.
Chapter fifteen
Jen
I wake up because something is wrong outside. I do not know what. My body knows. My body has been listening for things I never used to hear.
I open my eyes. Thaw is already awake.
He is on his side facing me, gold eyes open, the bond at my sternum carrying his attention before I have finished registering my own. He has not moved. He is just awake.
"You felt it," he says. Quiet.
"Felt what?"
"The bond climbed. Tell me what."
"Something is wrong outside."
"Where?"
"I do not know. The air. Something." I said getting frustrated.
He is sitting up before I have finished. He does not reach for clothes — he is still in the loose pants he sleeps in, bare from the waist up. His head turns once toward the door, then the window, then back to me.
"Crull."
The single word goes through the wall. The bond at my wrist throbs hot. The floor in the next room creaks and the door opens and Crull is there before Thaw has finished saying his name, amber eyes already reading the room.
"Jen felt something. Outside."
