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I’d promised him nothing could hurt me, but what if I broke that vow? What if I got hurt and never saw my pack again? All because I forgot I wasn’t as deadly as a wolf and had no method of protection.
Glancing over my shoulder, I contemplated bolting.
This was idiocy.
There was nothing here for me apart from dangerous fire that ought to be smothered.
I could be back at the cave before dark.
My thighs bunched to go.
My hands fisted to race.
Only, a soft sigh met my ears, drifting through the grass.
I stiffened.
Another soft noise trickled through the stalks, slipping into my ears, and making my heart skip a beat.
The urge to see what it was overshadowed my instinct to run.
Stabbing the ground with a finger to keep my balance and silence, I kept my breathing shallow as the footfalls came ever nearer, occasionally stopping as if deciding which way to go.
I didn’t move as a few moments passed.
A rustle and snap, followed by more footfalls coming directly for me.
I crouched lower, peering through the dense grass and its towering stems. A large woven item appeared, pushing some of the seedheads out of the way, giving a free path for the creature to follow.
Fingers wrapped tight around the woven item, leading to an arm and chest and—
My palm slammed into the earth as my balance wobbled.
“I don’t care.” I cupped her cheeks, running my thumb over her bottom lip. “I’d do anything, kill anyone, destroy everything if it meant we could be together—”
My fingers clawed into the dirt as the vision cracked like lightning.
I dropped to my knees, panting.
She was real.
My dreams weren’t false.
She’s real!
I couldn’t breathe.
In all my torturous days of searching and nights of endless struggle, I’d not found a single mortal. I’d come to believe I was the only one. That my own pack had died out, leaving me to roam aimlessly until the alpha had given me a new one.
But she was here.
The girl from my hauntings.
With moonshine hair and conquering familiarity.
My heart rate increased as she stopped a few paces away. Her eyes scanned the grass tops, blind to me crouched in the dirt.
Her gaze was amber, not gold.
My heart hitched with confusion.
How could I remember her kiss, her taste, yet forget the colour of her eyes and the shape of her face?
She came a little nearer, dousing my crescent-moon mark with singeing agony. She was so close I could reach out and touch her. So close I could smell her: sooty from fire and dusty from hard work.
The urge to touch crashed through me.
Faintest memories of touching her in another life broke every bone in my body.
I dug my fingers deeper into the ground.
I no longer cared about the ever-burning fire.
I only cared about her.
Taking another step, she glanced around, licked her lips, then placed the bowl-like item on her hip. Holding the woven rim tight with one hand, she plucked the nearby seedheads, ripping off the top with a practiced roll of her wrist before depositing them onto the impressive pile she’d already gathered.
She moved smoothly, gracefully, her skin the same dark honey as sandy earth after a good rain. Her white hair glittered with the afternoon sunshine, defying all colours that usually made up this world.
I raised a hand, studying my own colouring.
Our skin was similar, but while hers retained a golden hue, mine seemed to prefer the silvery cast of shadows. While her fingers danced delicately over the grass heads, mine were bent like claws, the pads of my palms as calloused as a wolf’s paw.
She drifted forward, slipping past me unaware.
The sudden loss of her made ice howl through me.
I tensed to follow, but she stopped again, repeating the dance of gathering and collecting.
Her back faced me now, giving me another view. Her white hair cascaded down her spine, gleaming and straight, swaying over the dark brown fur cutting her body in two places.
I frowned.
That fur was not her own.
The rest of her skin was hairless and smooth, so why did she bind herself with another’s pelt?
My eyes trailed down my own form, lingering over the ingrained dirt on my knees, feet, and legs. No matter how often the pack went to the river or how long I swam in the cool water, the stains on my skin never faded. The smudges helped hide the scars from my lonely travels, gifting me a range of colours just like the silver and black hues found in my pack’s fur.
My heart pounded with absolute relief.
All those nights of searching.
All those days of longing.
Over.
Because I’ve finally found her.
The woman continued forward again, grabbing her hair with a free hand to twist it over her shoulder, as if encouraging a breeze on her back from the heat of the afternoon sun.
Reaching upward, I grabbed strands of my own hair.
