AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’ll go for a run,” he added, “we’ll come back, shower, and we’ll both smell content for the pack for the evening.”
Well, with that icing on the cupcake? Sold. “Deal. Where are we going to go?”
“The trees,” he said, moving his hand in a circular fashion to indicate here, there, everywhere.
I dredged up a smile. “Okay. I’m in.”
“This way,”Searle whispered, guiding me towards the mudroom through a narrow staircase that twisted behind the pantry.
We tip-toed down the steep wooden stairs that were oddly arranged in a tight little passage to the first floor, which deposited usbehindthe pantry (the door into the pantry having been boarded up with shelves years ago) in anarrowpassage so narrow I could fit down it but he had to turn sideways, and through an equally narrow door that opened up onto the mudroom. The door pushed aside several pairs of boots, a rack of coats, a snow shovel, and a bag of ice salt.
“I thought this was just a wall,” I whispered as I stepped over the boots and shovel and pushed through the coats on hooks.
“There are all kinds of back ways through the house,” he whispered, one eye on the small kitchen window that overlooked the mudroom. The sounds of the post-dinner clean-up rattled through it, along with yellow light. The porch was dim, and illuminated only by the house lights, meaning we had to pick our way around the cozy clutter by memory.
The cold sliced through my robe-wrapped nakedness. My teeth instantly started to chatter. I pressed myself against the wall out of range of the kitchen light while Searle carefully closed the door and re-arranged the clutter obfuscating it. Then he gestured to me to follow him as he crouched down and snuck under the kitchen window along the wall.
This was silly. We weregoddamn adults, for fuck’s sake.
We made it to the corner, out of sight of the window. Searle buckled a phone collar around his neck and gave me a nod.
I hesitated just a minute before summoning my shift. It shivered under my skin like an exquisite brush, met the veil of MoonDark, and I pushed past it. The brush passed over me, through me, and I sighed as I dropped to all fours, wearing my fur, and the rush of scents came to me and overwhelmed me for a glorious second.
My hide tingled and shivered.
Then the tingling pleasure faded, and the cold, bitter night closed in, along with the reality that it was Searle at my side, not Sterling.
I hadn’t prepared myself for the crush of his scent and howcloseandintimateit’d be with him in this form. He was much slower to shift, his body sort of dissolving and re-forming while folding in and over itself, and his deep brown pelt emerging like lichen growing in one of those time-lapse plant videos. He was a thick, large wolf—classic North American bred—with eyes the color of a harvest moon, and while I’d first thought he was brown, he was actually a dark brown merle, his coat being two different shades of brown twisted on each other like shadows through trees. He was almost as big as Jun, with massive, thick shoulders, huge paws and claws, and a plush tail that was darker along the top than the bottom.
He was very hard to see in the shadows with his merle coat, even though he was brown and not inky black.
He cocked his head to the side. “Snow white.”
“Yes. Not easy prey, though.”I was a snow-white wolf, which wasn’t really the best color unless you were predominantly in an arctic environment. I clicked my teeth at him. I did just fine for myself as a hunter, even with my see-me-from-a-thousand-yards pelt.
“Little too.”
I slicked my ears back. But his scent said he was just making observations, and he didn’t mean anything else by it. His scent told me a lot of things, most of which I didn’t want to know: he’d enjoyed dinner, he was looking forward to the run, he was worried about a number of different things, he was intrigued by what we were about to do, that he was a male in the prime of his life, physically flawless, and he knew it, and overlaid through all of it, a predator’s intrigue at what my snow-white pelt might lead to. No anxiety or concern about getting caught.
So Searle not only was willing to disobey direct orders, he also didn’t lose any sleep over it.
I shoved my beating heart down deeper into my gullet and focused on the run. Two friends could go for a moonlight run. Maybe I could convince Searle to settle for being friends.
Fat chance. Searle never settled foranything.
Searle nosed the door open with his snout and I slipped through under his ruff, then he slithered out after me with a grace no wolf that large should have, and he used his tail to oh-so-carefully close the door behind him.
So Searle had advanced sneaking skills. Very advanced. Noted.
He bounded off towards the treeline, streaking across the open yard like an evening shadow.
I shot after him.
He led me down a technical path in the trees, bouncing over fallen branches and brambles and through piles of debris and underbrush. My heart lifted with happiness at finally being in wolf form and running, even if I wasn’t with my favorite wolf. I wasrunning, ondirt, and throughbrush, with the sky overhead and no stench of city in my snout.
Memories of Sterling bringing me a rabbit, Jun pestering me with scents, and me teasing Sterling aboutbetter teach Jun, it’d be practiceflashed through my mind with each stride.
Promise me, Winter. Promise me you’ll make a life with him.
