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“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
The flint in her eyes softened. “It’s not my nature to let wolves die needlessly.”
“But it was your pack who attacked me.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “The young ones are on edge.” I supposed even though he was a full-fledged adult, the heir was little more than a pup in her eyes. “They’re overzealous in their attempts to protect the pack. Bear no grudge against them.”
Bear no grudge after they ripped out my side?Yet, truly, I didn’t, and they’d brought me back to be healed after all. “Why are they on edge?” I probed.
The elder moved along my body, poking and prodding as she assessed what was presumably her own handiwork. “This world is out of balance. It began ages ago, a slight tilt that began to push us toward our demise. Then, something changed. A twist in destiny. I sense it, as do the other elders of Wind-Blood. It gets under your fur, distorts sensations until you’re teetering on the edge.”
I was torn between the urge to dismiss her ramblings as nonsense or take them seriously. I’d learned the afterlife was real—and not just the “cast among the stars” vagueness we learned as part of shifter lore. Magic, murderous mermaids, creatures that turned you to stone with a glance. So it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that there was some truth to what the elder said.
Of course, if it was true, that meant more trouble was brewing.
Still, I couldn’t let that concern me. What I needed was to get out of this cabin, out of Wind-Blood lands, and break Daphne out of the Moon-Ghost cells. I wasn’t sure if they’d help me—or rather, if they’d try to keep me here. But I needed to go as soon as my body could carry me.
If the gentle clicking of her tongue was any indication, I was in bad shape.
And the elder was thorough. She worked her way up my body, going so far as to press her fingers through my hair to check my scalp. The red strands of my hair fell forward as she examined me.
Her fingers twisted through, and she bent low, her head inches above my forehead as she looked.
“Um, everything okay?” I asked, slightly edging farther down on the table. “Ouch!”
The exclamation came as she yanked on my hair, plucking a strand out.
She walked past me and held the strand up to the fading light of a window across the room, then spun back to face me.
“You’ve returned.”
Chapter III
Ifrowned.Did she know I’d come back from Hell?
“It’s been many years since the red wolf walked… many of the others have forgotten.” She seemed to be talking to herself more than me, her eyes taking on a distant look, but the words just confused me more. “The pups didn’t recognize the significance when they dragged you to my table.”
For the elder to appear as she did, she had to be old. I guessed easily over a hundred, though it was hard to say with any more precision because Moon-Ghost didn’t reallyhaveelders.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
She returned my frown, her brows creased as she read my face. “There is an old tale, one whispered in shadows on moonless nights. Of a red wolf and a black wolf.” She gestured to my hair.
What was she talking about?My red fur was unusual—there were no other shifters with it that I’d ever met, but Moon-Ghost didn’t comprise every single wolf ever. It had been a source of torment, a mark that I was different.
But red and black… I cast my mind back, remembering a mural I’d seen in the dim light of the castle dungeon. Two wolves had been there too. I hadn’t had time to think about it—being petrified immediately after would do that—but in the back of my mind, I’d wondered.
“One ruled over life, the other death,” she continued. “And together, they ruled all of us.”
A black wolf…Cole.
Cole, who I’d left behind in Hell, who had a barrage of secrets he’d been keeping. Who I’d kissed. Who I’d poisoned. Who infected my dreams and had watched me for years. I hadn’t seen him when I was asleep, but maybe that was simply because I hadn’t been asleep so much as passed out from blood loss.
Once again, I was left with more questions, but I had to focus on one thing at a time. If she believed I was related to whatever red wolf she spoke about so reverently, maybe she’d help me.
“Look, my friend is trapped in a Moon-Ghost cell,” I said urgently. “I need to get to her.”
The reverence disappeared, and the appraising eyes of the healer returned. “You won’t be going anywhere soon. You’ll require at least a week to recover. If you’d been human, you’d be dead.”
