Page 16
Arlene’s fingers don’t stop moving. I know.
*****
We pack light and we pack fast, the way people pack when they know exactly what they can afford to lose. I roll the bedding while Arlene sorts through the herb basket with new purpose, separating what she needs from what she doesn’t, the dried ginger, the raspberry leaf, the small cloth pouch she tucks into the inner pocket of her bag without comment. I don’t comment either. I just add an extra waterskin. The pups think we’re going on an adventure. We let them think that.
*****
On the seventh morning, my wolf smells them before I hear them, rot and decay the particular unwashed edge of men who have been living rough for longer than a few days. I hold up a fist. Everyone stops.
Far through the tree line, moving parallel to us at a great distance: rogue warriors.
“Shift.” I feel her try. Feel the moment it fails, a door that won’t open, her energy hitting a wall. The pregnancy. Of course.
“I can’t,” she sends back. No panic. Just a fact. I’m already shifting, the change coming fast and hard, bones resettling with a sound like green wood splitting. I drop low. “Get on.” She doesn’t hesitate. Damian first, then Darlene, then Arlene’s hands in my fur, her weight settling across my back, her arms locked around both pups. I don’t wait. I run. My Alpha wolf pushes to lose them. I am further away. Then I hear rogues are howling loud now, signaling the others, crashing through underbrush, not bothering to mask their pursuit. They want us to hear them. My wolf pushes harder.
Silver Moon territory is close, close enough that I can smell the border markers through the rot and the sweat and the blood already in the air. All we have to do is cross that border. We're going to make it.
Suddenly, something catches my hind legs mid stride, a whip of cord and weighted iron, wrapping tight, and then the ground is coming up fast, and I can’t stop it. I tumble. The impact is sudden and unforgiving. Landing me across the forest floor. I go down hard. In the same moment, I feel them leave my back… Arlene’s grip, the pups’ weight, all of it gone. I scramble, but the cord is still wrapped around my legs and the ground won’t let me up. It feels like time slows as I see Arlene in the air. I see her reach. Both arms find both our pups, pulling them in, and then she’s turning, tucking them close to her chest. Then her back meets the tree and she falls to the ground.
I growl, ripping off the bola from my legs. I’m up before the ringing stops, spinning. She’s against the base of a pine, both pups clutched to her chest, her arms still locked around them. Damian is whimpering. Darlene is crying. Arlene isn’t making a sound. I shift back.
Then I see the dark red stain spreading across the back of her shirt. A tree branch protruding from her shoulder. “No!” The word tears out of me. I’m across the ground, my hands on her face. “No.” My voice comes out wrecked. “Not again. I can’t lose you again.”
My teeth elongate. Fur starts sprouting. My wolf and I synchronize, “MAAATTTEEE!”
4
Darian's POV
“NO!” The scream splits the forest in half. It’s not mine and it’s not his , it’s both of us, fused at the root, one sound torn from two throats. My voice. His voice. Our voice. The pines shiver. Birds explode from their branches like dark confetti. Somewhere deep in the undergrowth, something small and quick bolts for cover.
Arlene is still breathing. I know this because I press my ear to her mouth and the air that comes out is warm and uneven and there, and my chest cracks open with the force of the relief. Her eyes are half lidded, glassy, the green of them almost swallowed by black. The branch is still in her shoulder, a jagged spear of pine driven clean through the meat above her collarbone, the wood dark and slick where it meets her skin.
Why isn’t she healing?
The question belongs to my wolf. He answers himself before I can.
The pup. She’s diverting everything to the pup.
I look down. Her hand is pressed flat against her stomach, fingers splayed, knuckles white. Even unconscious, even dying, she is protecting what’s inside her. The branch stays. If I pull it, she bleeds out. If I leave it, she bleeds out slower. There is no good option. There is only one that buys time.
The howling starts again. Closer now. Maybe half a mile south, moving fast through the old growth timber. Five voices, maybe six. Hunting formation.
I move.
Arlene first. I lift her as carefully as a man can lift a woman with a tree through her shoulder, and she makes a sound , small, guttural, the kind of sound that lives below language , and her eyes flutter. Not awake. Not gone. Somewhere in between.
“Mommy?” Damian’s voice is thin, shaking. His alpha blood aura starts slipping out again. My wolf hurriedly calms his wolf.
“She’s okay.” I don’t recognize my own voice. It’s steady. Calm. The voice of a man who is not falling apart inside his own chest. “She’s going to be okay. Both of you , hold on to me. Arms around my neck. Now.”
They climb. Darlene’s small fingers twist into my collar. Damian hooks his chin over my shoulder, his breath coming in quick, wet bursts against my ear. I shift my grip on Arlene, adjust the angle of the branch so it won’t catch on anything, and I run.
The border markers hit my nose before I see them , silver and iron and pack magic layered thick into the soil. Silver Moon territory. Close. So close the air changes, gets cleaner, the rot giving way to something older and more ordered.
I stop at the edge.
Not over. Not yet. Crossing the line means surrendering to whatever pack law finds us, and I don’t know this Alpha, I don’t know this Luna, I don’t know if they’ll help us or cage us or hand us back. I need a safe place first. A place to put them down where the hunters won’t find them.
