44

Eleven more shots rang out, seizing Lexie’s consciousness and dragging it back to the light. She groaned and rolled to her side, watching her father’s friends, the hunters she’d grown up with, sink bullets deep into the felled wolves’ heads.

“Corwin!” she heard Sharmalee cry. “Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god!”

Lexie raised her head to see the Pack and hunters run to Corwin, who lay flat on the ground at the treeline, wheezing.

One of the hunters shouted, “Get me a kit!”

Renee’s voice countered: “Get her into the forest!”

The hunter shouted back, “Don’t move her!” but Renee and the other girls ignored him, picking Corwin up like a saint or a martyr, holding her aloft in their arms.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Renee said.

Lexie slid herself off the truck bed, finding her torso wrapped in gauze and her arm in a sling. She hurried to Renee, taking part of Corwin’s leg and shuffling along with them. “What are you doing?”

“If she changes, she might be able to heal. We need to get her away from the full sunshine.”

Lexie looked through the trees, but there was no moon, and wouldn’t be for many hours.

The girls lowered Corwin to a bed of pine needles. Renee’s whispers emerged like an incantation. “Turn baby, turn baby. Come on come on.”

Sharmalee was already crying, and Mitch held Corwin’s hand to his mouth, kissing it like a prince trying to break death’s curse. Lexie strained as though she could will Corwin’s wolf to life. It wasn’t praying, but it looked like it; it wasn’t pleading, but it felt like it.

Lexie couldn’t help but note—inappropriate though it might be—the beauty of their disparate colors: Corwin’s skin too pale, too gone, too spent, and the melted, dewy brown of Sharmalee’s as she draped herself nude atop her dying lover.

Ray and the hunters stood in a loose circle, watching in wonder as the girls negotiated with any deity or force they could, pleading for Corwin’s life.

Corwin’s face lost its pink, and her breath stilled to silence. Sunlight broke through the pine cover, casting yellow light on her blonde dreadlocks and deep shadows beneath her eyes. The girls put their hands on her, keeping her warm. When Corwin’s breath stopped, no sound followed.

Then, only the faintest squeak from Sharmalee as she suppressed a sob.

Mitch wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

Renee placed her hand atop Lexie’s, which rested on Corwin’s sternum. Neither wanted to move, even long after it became clear that Corwin’s last breath was expended.

The dappled sunlight warmed them all, as they sat as though in shiva alongside their fallen sister.

A moan broke the silence, followed by a gurgle. And a breath. Movement beneath Lexie’s palm.

Without knowing why, as though it were a new sensation, Lexie held Corwin’s chin, looking at the wolf inside like she did when she looked through the reflections on her knife. She called to it, inviting it to emerge but not to take hold. She held its gaze like an alpha. No. Like a peacespeaker, the pack member charged with making the disparate parts into something more than just their sum.

Corwin’s breath hitched in a ragged gasp. Her golden wolf silhouette teased at the edges of her body. She groaned as it twisted her injured innards. Lexie lay her hand on Corwin’s furrowed brow, shushing her like a sister, calming the wolf that fought to emerge, while encouraging its power to heal.

Wordlessly, Lexie called to Corwin’s wolf, asking it to lick the grave wounds, to seal the fractures in her flesh and mend the broken veins that filled her abdomen with blood. Corwin’s wolf heeded Lexie’s request out of a willingness to, not obey, but please. It understood contentment through allegiance and the power in submission.

Corwin’s chin lengthened, the soft scruff of fur tickling Lexie’s finger. Corwin groaned again, but a sigh soon followed.

Her wolf’s chest pressed up against Lexie’s hand. The other girls backed up to give Corwin more space. A cracked rib grated with each breath, and Lexie held her hand above it without touching. She coaxed the wolf further, to take on its full form, and as it did, the rib mended, Corwin’s chest swelled, and the purplish bruise of blood receded.

Sharmalee held her hands around Corwin’s temples. Corwin’s yellow eyes opened once, wide, and then squeezed tightly shut.

Lexie scanned the length of Corwin’s supine body, looking for any wounds left unmended and finding none. She crawled to Corwin’s face, covering Sharmalee’s hand with her own.

“Corwin, sweetie,” Lexie whispered. She smiled when Corwin opened her eyes again. “Your body is healed, you can send the wolf away again now.”

Corwin’s eyes were blank with remembered pain. She shook her head, her muzzle not constructed to form words. Lexie stroked her fur.

“Thank your wolf for coming to you and send it back inside. She’ll always be there, she’s yours to call forth when you need her. But she is obedient to you. You have the right to decide how to claim your form.”

Corwin nodded her understanding. With her next breath, she drew the beast within, leaving her honey-colored skin bare to the sunlight.

Hazel’s wail broke the relieved hush that followed.

The girls ran to Lexie’s truck. Stefan stepped away to allow Hazel room to throw herself upon Jenna’s lifeless body. Lexie looked for Jenna’s wolf as she had Corwin’s, but there was nothing to call. No life there, nor had there been for some time.

Hazel didn’t cry but heaved, a ruckus of overwhelming emotions, all of which fought at her throat to generate sound. What came out was a dry croak and body-wracking sobs.

The girls and Mitch stood in a semicircle around the truck, waiting for Hazel to expend or slow. Eventually, she wiped her hair from her face and glanced past her sisters to the nameless hunters standing like uncomfortable statues in the shadows beyond.

A rustling at the horizon stole everyone’s attention. Ray reached for his rifle. Cresting over the hill was Taylor, face strained, Otter draped over his shoulder. Renee and Stefan ran to him. Renee took Otter, his limbs hanging like a broken doll’s. Renee’s eyes grew cold and dark, staring ahead, fighting tears. She lowered Otter onto the truck bed next to Jenna. Now it was Stefan’s turn to break. His face fell into a silent howl of pain. He reached for Taylor and Otter both.

Lexie stepped away from the grief she could do nothing to assuage. She assessed the field. Twelve wolf corpses lay in the cold sunlight, individual red-black pools cradling their heads like oily pillows.

She had forgotten about her nudity, or perhaps she just didn’t care anymore. Cold wind sliced at her skin, but she didn’t care about that either. Nothing seemed to matter. She stood in a sad state of near-grace, buffeted only by her pulse, her breath. Memories and projections didn’t enter her, they were wavelengths moving through a dead radio. It was all the present, and the sick sad rightness of it.

She heard the whip of a coat, and turned to find her father standing there, holding it by the shoulders, an offering. The coat was coarse wool with satin lining—deep green, handmade, leather hoops around leather buttons, and a hood. “This wasn’t your mama’s,” he said. “It was mine.”

Lexie expected Ray to avert his eyes, but there was nothing left to be ashamed of. She was his blood, his daughter, his pride, and his sorrow.

She stepped into the coat, pulling her bloody and sweat-soaked hair over her shoulder as he eased the sleeves up and over.

“I was skinny like you,” he said. “And strong.”

He turned her around and buttoned her in with clumsy fingers, starting at her sternum and working down. When he was done, he smoothed the fabric over her shoulders and held her. His face twisted into a pained grimace, and he began to sob.

Like a spark to tinder, his grief—or maybe his relief—ignited her own. She broke into sobs as well. His anguish was so true, so fierce, that she was powerless before it.

She stepped into her father’s arms, and he squeezed her tighter than anything, ever. Her breath escaped on a wheeze and her bones protested. Her heart grew stronger in the effort to keep beating.

She sighed and let herself be held.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered and he just kept on crying, a squeeze with a sob to tell her that he knew.

“Do you want to sleep at home tonight?”

Lexie shook her head. “I think I need to be with the Pack tonight. We’re going to have to figure out … ” Lexie took a heavy breath, “ … what to do with Jenna.”

Ray nodded. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Lexie wiped her eyes.

“No, I’m sorry about everything. I won’t lie to you anymore.”

Lexie laughed. “Sure, Dad. I’ll try and hold you to that.”