Page 48 of The SnowFang Secret


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I ran harder, coming abreast of Searle’s massive shoulder.

I need to know you’ll be okay.

I lifted my snout to the wind, hoping to catch a trace of his scent clinging to the trees or the brush or on the air. The light of the half-moon illuminated some of the trail, but I felt my way through my paws, sensing how the earth beneath me would twist and move.

We splashed across a low creek that had frozen in the night chill, paws breaking through it and the icy, muddy cold splashing our bellies and legs and soaking between our paws. His claws scratched on rock.

Searle stretched, running faster, leading me down a steep hillside littered with debris and hazards.

Promise me, Winter. Promise me.

We slid down a semi-frozen, semi-muck hillside to a stop at the bottom.

I panted hard, my heart racing and my old injuries pounding. Searle circled around me, head high, snout twitching as he sniffed the frigid air. Not much breeze that night. My left front paw twitched and ached from the shoulder down.

Promise me.

The night in Clare flickered in my mind, the crush of bodies, the scent, the wolf with eyes I knew, staring down at me, thepaingoing through my side and my packmates, where were—

Searle bumped me with his shoulder.

I startled, yelped, and snapped at him. He dodged easily, then trotted off towards the north.

He led me at an easy pace through the forest, indicating the trees that had been scent-marked to provide navigation and warnings to anyone in the treeline, and I got the grand tour of the acres of trees that cascaded down the rocky hillside to the main road below. We jumped down rocks and slid down ice formations and leapt over fallen branches and splashed through mud. He didn’t say anything, but his scent said he was enjoying the little adventure. There was a familiarity to that enjoyment too—he enjoyed doing these jaunts, and he was pleased to have someone to come with him.

We trotted through the treeline and came out at the main road, where it split into two, with the offshoot road leading up the hill to the house, and the main road bending off around the hillside and disappearing into the trees, but in front of us was a wide, open spread of hayfield, and beyond that, more trees.

Searle sat down in the shadow of a large rock, tail twitching thoughtfully as he stared across the twilight hayfield.

Hesitantly, I sat next to him and took in the quiet, still evening.

“You didn’t fall once,”he said.

I huffed. Of course I hadn’t. I settled down on my belly and extended my forelegs out in front of me. I kept my snout to the north breeze and tried to think of nothing at all. It had been a nice run. Good run. Nice endorphin bath for my brain. Very nice.

And the landscape was different enough from New York or Montana that it reminded me of nothing.

Searle lifted his nose. There wasn’t much of a breeze, despite the high, wispy clouds against the starlit sky. His scent changed.

I instinctively bellied down in the shadow of the rock and went perfectly still.

He trotted off to the south, along the road but in the shadows of the rock. I moved after him, staying close and on his offside. His scent trailedangerandtrespasserandterritory.

Nothing like a little late-night hunt. Except we weren’t supposed to be out here at all. So better not come back bloodied up.

I caught the scent of it before Searle did, and heard it in the brush, a hundred yards above us up the hillside.“I’ve got it.”

“Summer—”

Oh, sorry, that wasn’t my name. He must have been talking to someone else.

I swept across the brush, light on my paws but low to the ground, towards the scent until the wolf came into view—a male, picking his way up the rocky hillside and focused on the path towards the house. Whowasthis idiot? It wasn’t like I was quiet in all this brush, or he was coming from a good direction…

And the nearest exit may bebehindyou…

I darted forward and sank my teeth into his hamstring.

He yelped, barked and spun around, ripping himself free, and I had a face full of fangs. I jumped back, but his teeth grazed my snout, peeling up layers of fur and skin. The hunt and rage boiled in me, and I lunged forward. He tossed me aside. I rolled, bounced, and shook myself off.

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