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I sighed. “You’re an idiot.”
He nosed the gopher toward me.
“But so am I.”
He looked up slowly.
“Stupid fucking mutts,” I said, and there was sunshine and pack and a tentative question of ??friendfriendfriend??
I reached out my hand.
He pressed his nose against my palm.
Then his tongue came out and he drooled all over me.
I glared at him as I pulled my hand back.
He cocked his head.
I cooked the rabbits.
The wolves were pleased.
I told them I wasn’t going to touch the gopher.
They were less pleased.
Their songs that night were still full of grief and rage, but they had a thread of yellow running through them.
Like the sun.
“WHAT ARE you doing?” Kelly asked me. Another night, another random hotel room somewhere in rural Washington. Carter and Joe were out getting food. We’d spent the past few nights sleeping in the SUV, and I was looking forward to a bed.
But first I needed to get rid of all the excess.
I stood shirtless in the bathroom, staring at the mirror, not recognizing the man who stared back at me. The dark beard on my face was quickly growing out of control. Black hair fell past my ears and curled at my neck. I was bigger too, somehow harder than I’d been before. The full tattooed sleeves on my arms looked stretched far wider than they’d ever been. Roses surrounded the raven, thorns wrapping around its talons. Runes and archaic symbols stretched along my forearms: Romanian, Sumerian, Gaelic. An amalgamation of all those who had come befo
re me. Marks of alchemy, of fire and water, of silver and wind. They had been carved into me by my father over a period of years, the raven being the last.
All except for the one on my chest above my heart. That’d been mine. My choice. It wasn’t magic, but it’d been for me.
Kelly saw it. His eyes widened, but he knew better.
A wolf’s head, tilted back and baying at the moon.
Buried in the design of his neck was a raven, wings spread and taking flight.
My choice.
Mine alone.
Mine.
I’d kept it covered for so long that I hadn’t even thought about it when I’d come in here and stripped off my shirt, wanting to do something to keep my skin from crawling.
“You just gonna stare?” I said to Kelly, challenging him.
He shook his head. “I’m just—it doesn’t matter. I’ll leave you alone.”
