Chapter
One
CORDELIA
“Cordelia?”
It’s Maud the pack healer and as close to a mother as I have.
“Yes, ma’am?”
I look up from the herbs I’m tying into bundles to dry–lavender, chamomile and rosemary. The herbs will be useful this fall in the tea and remedies Maud crafts for the pack in exchange for coin. Her bestseller is the tea the unmated she-wolves use to turn the head of their chosen wolf.
“It doesn’t do much but make them smell a little sweeter, like they’re almost in heat. Because man or wolf, the male species has to be hit over the head to take a hint.”
Maud is right about the male species. She calls her tea Soulmate’s Steep. We’re sold out of it for the season.
“Come over here and help me move these sweetgrass bundles to the back, will you?” Maud asks. Her long silvery hair is tied in a braid, her tan skin contrasting prettily with the blue skirt and red blouse she’s wearing. Bronze charms and touchstones swing from the hemp belt tied at her waist. Maud is small, just barely coming to my chin but for her status as an Elder she’s not frail.It’s tough to say how old Maud is so I don’t try to guess. I know she’s older than my parents probably would be right now but that’s it, honestly.
I’ve seen her bring down a tree with just a few swings of her axe. The woman is capable and strong, and I know she’s been like that her entire life if the wide berth and deferential looks she pulls from even the Alpha and his family tell me anything.
Luna willing, one day I’m going to be just like her.
Most days I help Maud with whatever tasks she has for me. Sometimes it’s chopping wood or harvesting mushrooms from the forest, other days I’m tending the bees or repairing the thatchwork roof of the hut before a storm rolls in. Maud pays me a cut and has ever since I got dumped here by Alpha Ashford as an orphaned nine year old with nothing and no one but the clothes on my back. That was fifteen years ago this winter. I’ve saved my money in an old industrial size coffee can that I swiped from the kitchens. I keep it under the back porch. Maud wouldn’t take it but I’m not hiding it from her. She’s the one who told me to hide it.
“It’s healthy for a woman to have a few dollars no one knows about. Hide this money, girl. Don’t tell a soul.
I’m up to just over fifteen thousand dollars in my tin coffee can. I’ve been rolling as many bills as I can into sums of a hundred with rubber bands but it’s getting tough to squeeze in more dollars and I’ve had to keep the coins in a sock in my nightstand. But I’ve done just like Maud asked me and I haven’t told a soul about the money. I’ve got plans for it. A new couch for Maud because the one she has sags in the middle and I know it’s hard for her to get up from. I’m going to hire one of the carpenters in the village to create a spice rack for her pantry that spins to keep ingredients organized. Plus, I’ve got my eye on a new cell phone for her too because she uses a flip phonewhere the buttons stick. And of course, there’s my pipe dream of putting an addition onto her hut just for me.
I love Maud’s hut more than any other place so why not make it bigger? Right now, I have to return to the main village and bunk in the communal house where the unmated she-wolves live.
“If there was room could I live here with you?” I asked her once when I was feeling brave.
Her answer was instant. “Of course, my sweet girl, but they’d never let you.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
I didn’t know how I’d take care of it, but I would. I’d always managed to before so why would this time be any different? Every inch of space that I have in this pack I’ve had to fight for, even if the way I’ve fought has been to endure.
Whatever the price, I'll do the same to be with Maud. There’s nothing I wouldn’t endure to spend my days out here with her than in the village with the pack.
Maud’s place is nice, with well-worn dirt floors that are as smooth and as polished as any high finished wood floor in the Alpha’s mansion. Dark wood and thatchwork make up the hut’s frame, and the hearth is built from large river stones. Thick, wavy glass window panes distort the outside world into a softer version of reality. The smell of herbal tea and incense clings to every inch of it and just sitting in the space warms me down to my bones in a way that no other place on Frostclaw land does.
All of my planned purchases won’t wipe out my coffee can savings, not entirely. It'll all take planning, though, on account of the cell phone, and having to explain where I’ve come into so much cash all at once when I hire the builders. The McCarty’s can get it done quick and fast. I’ve watched them get an entire house built in just three days. A room addition shouldn’t takethem more than a thousand cash and a day at the speed they work.
Plus, I’ve got my heart set on a car.An honest to goodness car.
When I’ve hitched a ride into town with Maud on her supply runs, I’ve seen some for sale for as little as three thousand. They don’t look like much but they seem more reliable than the old rusted truck Maud drives. Outside of Maud, no shifter girls know how to drive in Frostclaw.
I’d be the first.
Kind of funny to think about it like that when I’m not much of a shifter girl because I don’t have a wolf.
That’s right, at the ripe age of twenty four, I’m the oldest wolf-less pack member Frostclaw Pack has ever seen. At this rate I’ll be the first shifter girl to learn to drive before I shift, but I don’t stop hoping.
I can feel my wolf.I know she’s there.
I just wish I knew how to get her to come out. My chest aches like it always does when I think about my wolf. I frown and rub the heel of my palm against my chest as I rise from the table and do as Maud asks. She stands just outside the doorway and points around the side of the hut. There’s a storage shed out by the forest edge she keeps her larger dried goods in. The sweetgrass bundles are usually a foot and a half long and half as wide. The shed is the only sensible place they’ll fit.
