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When she wakes, she’ll know a Gulon survived. She can send wolves to this mountain without ever seeing the entrance. Enough of them, searching every fold, every vent, every approach to the graves—

I set my shoulder against the slab.

The relics are still in their chamber. I can’t move any of it beyond a pack’s reach tonight, or take her downstream and make her forget my face.

She’s staying here.

I push until the stone scrapes across the outer passage. It takes the last strength in my legs to settle it into place.

I stand with my hand against it, listening for her breathing from the room behind me.

Chapter 5

I try to pull my left arm out from under the blanket, and pain stops me halfway.

Shit. Still that shoulder.

I leave it where it is and open my eyes. A fire burns a few paces from my feet, and the wall beside me is stone. So is the ceiling. I turn my head carefully, rubbing my cheek against folded cloth.

The scrape there stings, but I’m warm all the way to my toes.

For a while I stay still and listen to the fire. Water ran beside me the last time I could keep my eyes open. I was trying to get out of it, and the rocks were too far away.

Now someone has put an extra fur over my feet.

I lift the heavy covering with my good hand. It’s a cloak, with a fastening at one corner and a worn edge where my thumb rests. Beneath it I’m naked, and clean linen wraps my shoulder. The bandage holds when I move my fingers. Whoever put it on left room for that.

The splintered wood is gone.

I touch the cloth around the wound, feeling for a wet patch, but it’s dry. Even my hair is clean. Someone’s been thorough. Two torn nails catch on the cloak when I pull it back up.

There’s an animal smell in the cloth. I bring the edge closer, trying to place it. Predator, certainly, but I can’t get much beyond that. Smoke is easier, and even that takes another breath.

I’ve slept beside a fire and nearly drowned. My nose can recover with the rest of me.

Across the room lies another bed of furs, wider than mine. There’s a pot at the hearth, a water jug beside it, and two dark openings in the stone. A narrow patch of daylight reaches the wall high above the nearer one.

I lower the cloak and find a man standing in that opening.

He has a cup in one hand and folded cloth over the other arm. I didn’t hear him coming.

He’s about Keer’s height, but there’s so much more of him across the shoulders that I look twice. The dark over them isn’t a cloak. It’s fur, and it runs down both arms to the backs of his hands. His chest is bare below it, his middle thick with muscle above the waistband of his trousers.

Every wolf I know is either a man or a wolf. He’s standing there as both, holding a cup.

I look up at his face. Pale fur crosses his brow, and something in his hair moves.

It’s an ear. And not a human one.

What the hell is he?

I remember sharp teeth, close to my face, and being told to lie still.

He comes toward me without a scrape of his feet on the stone. His fingers end in long, curved claws, and he sets the cup down beside my hand, keeping the points clear of the rim.

“Drink.”

The word comes out rough. Two fang tips show against his lip until his mouth closes around them.