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For the first time in a long time, Adena greeted me. Perhaps she’d grown lonely while locked up in the van, because she launched herself off the back of a seat and fluttered against my chest as I stumbled upright. Settling her with an effort, I trailed my fingers through slick feathers until I contacted warm skin, one word reverberating through my brain:
Pack.
I didn’t have long to bask in our reunion however, because Benjie barreled past without waiting for me to angle myself sideways. “Pardon me, ‘scuse me, coming through.”
Despite his words, he was far from careful. The shaman had hung onto his duffel bag throughout the run to the hospital and the sprint out of it, and the bulky satchel now swept Adena off my shoulder before whacking against the side of my head far harder than I thought it should have done.
“Ow. What do you have in there? Rocks?” I grumbled. By the time my eyes had stopped watering, seats had assigned themselves in a manner I definitely didn’t approve of.
Keeping the werewolves and the students separate had been a primary goal for this trip from the beginning. But Jacob was climbing into the front seat next to Harry—“We guys have to stick together.” Adena had flown from me to Val, which prompted animal-loving Emily and my far-too-astute TA to join them.
That left me, Claw, and the non-drug-dealing Noah as the only three left standing. There was one empty double seat remaining plus one singleton.
Which begged the question: Was I going to willingly place a student next to a werewolf? Or would I suck it up and share space with the alpha I’d been avoiding?
“Window or aisle?” Claw asked. His amusement smelled like honeysuckle.
I sighed and gave in to the inevitable. “I guess I’ll take the aisle seat.”
***
I REMAINED ERECT AND watchful for over an hour. But darkness fell, werewolves remained two-legged, and students stayed blissfully oblivious to the unusual aspects of their seatmates.
No wonder my head gradually started nodding. Tired, my wolf complained.
Okay, we can sleep...just not on Claw’s shoulder. Despite my stated boundary, I felt Claw’s arm pull me in closer. Warmth enfolded me as I drifted off to sleep.
Or maybe I wasn’t being claimed by slumber? Because my eyes blinked back open to the blue of twilight. Panting, I pushed fur-clad legs through deep snowdrifts, a wolf pup clutched to my shoulder beneath another shroud of fur.
The way should have been slow going, but someone had walked through here multiple times already. Ahead, a flickering campfire drew me toward an elevated bluff that likely housed the trail-breakers. Friends of the cave girl’s? That seemed unlikely since she’d traveled thousands of miles to escape brutal pack mates. Surely if she’d found an ally in the interim, they would have been present at her baby’s birth....
A clatter of rocks from the direction of the campfire. The cave girl dropped to her knees, hiding herself in a snowy indentation created by the half-formed path.
I’d been right—the people ahead were dangerous rather than friendly. Torchlight spilled out into the open. The wolf pup chirruped a tentative question.
“Quiet, sweetheart. Quiet, quiet.” The cave girl comforted her offspring in a sing-song whisper. Our face was hot and sweaty despite the deep bite of wintry air.
For long seconds we hovered there, damp chill soaking through the skins that formed our clothing. The pup whimpered, feet scrabbling fitfully. Any moment now, it would start to howl.
Then a shout erupted, not from the pup but from the campfire above us. The words were empty syllables, incomprehensible even using my werewolf-assisted translation ability. Did that mean I could only understand what the cave girl understood, or were these people perhaps human only rather than werewolves?
The questions were academic, a way to distract myself from the fact that the cave girl was defenseless and I had no way to assist her. Dark shapes bounded toward us as we struggled back to our feet and retreated. We ran, peering back over one shoulder...then lost our balance as we sank up to one knee in a drift of snow.
Which is when the pup started shrieking in earnest. It was cold and hungry. Our milk was insufficient. No wonder when our belly clenched empty and painful beneath the puppy’s pedaling feet.
Male hands grabbed our shoulders and pulled us upright. Bearded faces, long hair braided, copper ornaments glinting between the strands.
They spoke quickly, angrily. We shrank backwards, then stumbled forward as they drew us toward the firelight.
Another rock shelter. A bonfire large enough to melt any snow that had drifted in from the edges. Women and children rose, sleepy and hesitant. But one stepped forward as we approached.
She was older than the cave girl. Tall, thin, sure of herself.
Around her neck hung a dried bear’s paw.
She spoke a single word and the men released us. Leaning closer, she peered at the baby clutched to our chest.
The sheepskin robe, at first, overshadowed the pup’s features. But the older woman reached forward to tilt it sideways. We weren’t fast enough to spin away before....
Furry ears were abruptly exposed to view.
The cave girl clutched her child, eyes scanning the frowning strangers. The pup shrieked louder. Our stomach rumbled.
For one moment, we hovered on the knife edge of terror. Then the tall woman extended her arms in the universal language of shared motherhood.
Wolf pup or human baby, she was willing to help.
***
I HALFWAY WOKE TO A cacophony of singing. One of the people in our van could carry a tune, but the rest were hopeless. Jacob’s drumming throbbed in my ears.
Then Claw shut down the merriment with alpha expediency. “Quiet,” he demanded. “Some of us are resting.”
By my guess, I was the only one who’d been sleeping. Something warm puddled in my belly as Claw pulled me in closer, shielding my exposed ear with the crook of his elbow.
The surrounding chatter faded, but lupine senses allowed me to catch Benjie’s cheeky answer. “Yes, Gruff and Growly. Of course, Gruff and Growly. As soon as you say the magic word.”
Claw, predictably, growled in lieu of an answer. Benjie chortled. Someone was going to get strangled...but I lost track of my concerns as I fell back asleep.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, a tickle against my cheek woke me. Adena, I decided. But the brush of contact materialized into tapping human fingers. Reluctantly, I cracked open one eye.
Benjie loomed above me in a way that would have been menacing if he hadn’t looked like a clown in the near darkness. His red hair stuck out in all directions. His eyes were almost comically wide.
“We need to talk,” he hissed in the sort of stage whisper that was likely to travel half a mile.
“Quiet,” I grumbled, closing my eyes and hoping he’d get the message. I’d meant to find a way to disentangle myself from the shaman before fleeing the county, but I hadn’t come up with any brilliant ideas. This was what I got for letting things slide.
“No, really.” The tapping started up again on my other cheekbone. What was this guy—a twelve-year-old with attention deficit disorder? “I can’t fix your problem if I don’t know how it started.”
“I don’t expect you to fix anything,” I answered, then stilled as the warm body against my left side shifted.
We were waking up Claw. The thought made my stomach dip downward.
Reluctantly, I disentangled myself from Claw’s encircling arm and shoved Benjie back into his seat.
Now I was the one crouched halfway in the aisle. “Look, I don’t expect anything from you,” I continued, keeping my voice low and hoping Benjie would get the message. “I understand you want to come along. So come. Be quiet. Take your money. When we’re done, I’ll leave you five stars on the website of your choice.”
In the darkness, Benjie’s silence reeked of disappointment. I’d called his bluff and exposed his weakness...and it was that very weakness that did me in.
Benjie wasn’t a fake in search of cash. He was a seeker looking for someone to believe in him.
I sighed. “Okay, look, I’ll tell you. We could use your help.”