Kade nods and looks between me and Aiden. “The roads will be impassable by tonight. It’s too dangerous to drive right now, so you’ll need to wait it out another day or two just for the storm to pass.” She straightens her shoulders. “I’ll be here with a truck when it clears. I’ll get Kojo to Wintermoon myself.”
He sets his camera bag aside and stands. “That is the plan, then. We wait.”
Kade tilts her head, those pale eyes cutting sideways. “How much?”
Aiden blinks at her. “What?”
“How much do you want for delivering him?” She tilts her head, studying him. “Three years of travel, hiding, running. That is a lot of work for a human. What is your price?”
His face hardens, and he straightens on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t help Kojo for money. I helped him because I saw that he was special.”
Kade snorts, one hand resting on her hip. “A helpful human always comes with a price.”
“Not this one.” Aiden crosses his arms, mirroring her posture, and I can smell the truth on him. His heartbeat stays steady, his scent carries no deception, and my Bouda confirms what I already know.
He is genuine, my Bouda says.
“My Bouda says he is genuine,” I offer.
Kade turns to me, a smirk at the corner of her mouth. “Your hyena is a know-it-all.”
I stop chewing. My Ridge prickles, and my Bouda goes very still inside my head. The anger rises through both of us at the same time because hyena is not a word we use. Hyena is what the humans call us when they want to make us small, when they want to pretend we are scavengers instead of predators, and it is a slur that Kade knows damn well she should not be using.
“It is Bouda,” I say, my voice flat.
Kade grins, showing a hint of fang. “I know. I was just trying to piss off your animal.” She winks at me. “And it worked.”
I hate her, my Bouda growls.I hate vampires and the cold and this entire frozen hellscape of a country.
Kade pulls a phone from her pocket and checks something on the screen before tucking it away. “I’ll be back when the storm passes. Stay inside, stay warm, and try not to kill each other.” She glances at me. “Especially you. The last thing I need is to explain to Wintermoon why their newest resident ate a journalist.”
“I do not eat humans,” I mutter, and she laughs.
“Good. Keep it that way.”
She steps back from the window, and the black smoke begins to form around her feet. The teleportation makes my stomach turn even from across the room, my Bouda recoiling at the wrongness of it because shifters are not meant to travel that way. The magic feels like a violation of natural law, a shortcut that thebody knows should not exist, and then she vanishes in a swirl of dark mist.
Good riddance, my Bouda mutters.Now can we leave this box and find somewhere with actual air?
Aiden lets out a long breath and sits back down on the bed. The room feels smaller with just the two of us, the walls pressing in from all sides, and I hate this place. I hate the low ceiling and the stained carpet and the smell of chemicals they use to clean the sheets. The window is too small and the door is too thin, and everything about this room tells my Bouda that we are trapped in a box with only one exit and no room to fight if something comes through it.
I miss my village. The open sky and the red earth and the sound of cubs laughing in the compound. The smell of frankincense burning on the altar and the heat of the sun on my bare shoulders and the way the night air carried the voices of my clan from one end of the territory to the other. I miss home, even though home no longer exists.
It will get better, my Bouda says quietly.Wintermoon is supposed to be safe. Open land, hills, lakes. Room to run.
Room to run is not the same as home, but it is better than this box.
Aiden clears his throat. “So. Wintermoon.” I look at him, and he picks at a thread on his camera bag. “What do you think it will be like? Starting over, I mean. All of it --- the land, the people, everything will be different.”
I consider the question. I have been running for three years, moving from one hiding place to the next, surviving on scraps and shadows, and I have not thought much about what comes after because thinking about after requires believing there will be an after. For a long time, I did not believe that.
“Different,” I say finally. “It will be different.”
Aiden nods. “Different is not always bad.”
“No, not always.” I go back to chewing on my bone, and my Bouda settles into a watchful silence. Outside, the snow keeps falling, and somewhere in the distance, the storm builds. We wait together for it to pass.
