A wolf steps in blood, p.6
A Wolf Steps in Blood, page 6
“What are their names?” she whispers, their play too sacred to disturb.
I smile, pointing at the fluffiest one. “That’s Rowan.” Then, the other, a little lankier. “And Ember.”
“How old are they?” Kalta asks.
“They’re both nearing a half year,” I say quietly.
My tone draws her attention away from the pups for the first time. “Why does that make you sad?”
“Not sad. Worried.” I lower my voice. “Shifting comes naturally to us, but a lot of the new pups still haven’t found their second forms.”
Some parents describe their older pups as feral. They don’t seem to understand the human world they’ve been born into. Mom has paid visits to more than a few families both in and outside our pack with pups who refuse to be housed. When they can be coaxed inside, they often destroy furniture or drag some small carcass into the house. As their pups grow older, more of the parents fear being accused of illegal possession of exotic pets and having their children stolen from them.
Kalta’s silence is troubled. “So Rowan and Ember have never been human?” she asks eventually.
I shake my head.
She squints at the pups as if trying to read in the dark. “Now that you say it, they don’t feel the same as you and Shiara, or even your mom.” I ask what she means, and she sighs, resting her head against me. “You’re not affected by magic. You are magic.”
I don’t feel magical. I think endangered, I think extirpated, I think extinct. I feel the weight and fear of those words in my body. I feel like the brittle remains of a whole creature, bones left out to dry and crack in the sun.
Kalta’s arms settle around me, a silent gesture of comfort.
An unshifted elder takes count of those gathered. Who’s working? Who’s sick? Our regular tally done, all attention turns to Kalta. Some of the youngest swish their tails, happy to meet anyone, but two elders stand warily apart. Shiara smokes on the hood of a busted car, eyes bright with anticipation. Mom stands by with an uneasy smile. I squeeze Kalta’s hand, and we step properly into the yard.
I’ve witnessed others introduce their mates, but none of them were ever strangers to us. With so few wolves, we know all the other packs. Kalta is unknown, and the unknown is a threat.
Wary amber eyes watch us from the dark, gleaming, waiting. Kalta and I stand in the orange halo of the porch light. The air is too wet. My throat is too dry. Do I tell them she’s not like us? Do I introduce her as a witch? When I hesitate, Kalta speaks first, her voice confidently at ease.
She shares her first name and says nothing about her magic, only, “I’m honored to be Yasmine’s mate and to know all of you.”
After a brief exchange of questioning glances, the pack encircles us to welcome Kalta into the fold, little ones licking at her hands while aunts and uncles congratulate us on our bond. They ask whether Kalta will run with us tonight, and now it’s her turn to hesitate. At the edge of the pack, an elder flattens her ears as if she’s met with something distasteful.
Kalta holds her head up high. “I’m not a wolf, but—”
“Not a wolf!” someone exclaims, and whatever camaraderie we might’ve had collapses. Aunts and uncles shout questions at Mom. How long has she known? Why has she permitted a human among us? Shiara cackles from the hood of the car, and I don’t even have the space to glare at her, drowning as we are in a chaos of questions, all of them angry, confused, and fearful.
An uncle grimaces as if we’ve willingly violated a tradition. Others exchange worried glances and whispers. Parents snatch their pups away as if Kalta has been revealed as a hunter. We’re interrogated and scolded by a dozen voices all at once. How did we meet? Are we sure there’s a bond? How can we trust her?
Faced with the doubts of my pack, it’s the first time I’ve seen Kalta shrink. Her hurt seeps into my chest like blood pooling from a fresh wound, triggering the wolf’s instincts. Protect. Protect.
My mouth feels sharp.
“Let her speak!” I snarl.
Silence—but for Shiara’s low whistle. The night looks crisper, smells stronger.
Kalta hugs me from behind, resting her cheek on my shoulder and a hand over my wild heart. “I’m safe. I’m okay,” she soothes, and the rage recedes.
I’m breathing hard and drenched in sweat. I run my tongue over my teeth and find them blunt and human again. I sink into Kalta’s soft embrace, her scent, her warmth.
She’s still holding me when she says, “I’m not a wolf. I’m a witch.”
No one dares speak after my outburst. That I would fight for her—and that she could calm me so effortlessly—seems proof enough of our connection. Those who aren’t startled by my sudden shift look cautiously hopeful. I wonder whether Mom shared her Ma’s stories with anyone else. And why did she never tell me?
Kalta hugs me tight. “I’m a witch, and our bond is true.”
Doris, an elder, presses to the front of the pack to get a better look at us. She’s a short, round woman like Mom, and her curls have thinned over the years. “A descendant of the coven who blessed us?” she ventures.
“I don’t know,” answers Kalta, “but my coven has stories of the wolves.” She recites what she told Mom and me, and the pack hangs on her every word. Murmurs of prophecy spread among us.
“How will you do this?” Doris asks us.
“I don’t know, but . . .” Kalta squeezes my hand, looking to me as if I hold the answer. “We’ll find out. I promise.”
I stay with Kalta despite her insistence that I join the hunt, that she can keep her own company for a few hours. The pack runs, and the night goes quiet without them. Mom always joins at the rear of the pack with the pups and elders. The kill is the one thing, and perhaps the most important thing, she can’t partake in. Her body doesn’t recognize raw meat, rejects it. Our only ceremony, and she’s forced to forgo it. Sometimes when I’m jostled away from the carcass by the younger ones, I watch her walk a pensive circle around the pack. She claims it’s to ensure no one happens upon us. Now, I think it’s to give privacy to her grief.
An ache burrows in my chest. My wolf isn’t lost like Mom’s, but maybe it’d be fairer if our fates were reversed. If I can’t figure out how to be a wolf or a woman, better for our blessing to go to someone who understands our past and is invested in our future, someone like Mom. Back when I was desperate to carve out a role among the pack, I tried accompanying her on midwife appointments. Eventually she dismissed me. My nerves made the new parents too anxious. Later, in trying to keep up with Shiara, my desperation to prove myself only succeeded in disrupting the pack’s usual dynamics and earned me a near-miss kick to the face from a startled deer. I’m no asset in a hunt, but I’ve never missed a run with my pack.
Kalta must feel my indecision. “It’s not too late to catch up,” she says gently.
“I want to stay with you.”
She kisses me, takes my hand, and leads me inside. Her anticipation riles my pulse. “We have the place to ourselves,” she says over her shoulder, dragging me into my room and pushing me up against the closed door. Her hands settle on my hips. “We can be as loud as we want,” she says against my ear. “And this time, it’s my turn to leave a mark.”
The bond turns us feral. I tear her clothes, or she tears mine. The buttons of a flannel are lost in the carpet. The bond surges like a tide pulled by the moon. Kalta’s sigh. Pulse. Teeth. She bites blood to the surface of my skin, grinds into me, whimpers. And the wolf, the wolf—
“Wait,” I gasp against her.
I don’t know when we made it to the bed, only that I am sharper. Kalta straddles my thigh. Her arms around my shoulders ground me. The wolf is restless—dangerous hands clenched in the sheets, dangerous mouth at Kalta’s throat.
Through the haze of lust, she finally sees me, says, “Oh.”
“Sorry.” I grimace, then cover my mouth with my hand only to remember that it too has chosen a new shape.
Kalta takes my hand away, laces our fingers. “You’re perfect,” she says. “You can’t hurt me.”
“But . . .”
“Do you want to stop?”
Never. “No,” I say, eventually.
She studies me. Her smile is so softly entrancing that I almost miss what she says next. “You’d be adorable in a collar.”
My tongue turns clumsy behind my wolf teeth. My thoughts shut down. I stumble over the starts of sentences. She smirk-giggles.
I find my voice. “Because I’m a wolf?”
The smirk remains. “Not necessarily. But it is funnier if you think of it that way.”
Oh. Flirting.
“I thought, um.”
She raises her eyebrows expectantly.
She’s so near, so warm. The scent of her drowns me.
“I thought you were all about saving the wolves, freeing us.”
“Freeing the wolves, yes. But you’re mine. Always. Forever.” The promise draws heat between my legs. She kisses me. “I love your mouth.”
“You—?”
She traces the point of a fang with her fingertip. “Beautiful,” she breathes. The moment stretches. The wolf catalogs her face again and again, recommits her scent to memory, savors the taste of her skin.
A wicked grin lights her face. She pushes me down and climbs on top of me. “I’m curious about this mouth,” she says, blinking innocently. “Won’t you indulge me?”
I could never deny her anything.
Early morning will bring the pack home. Kalta and I have a few precious hours remaining to ourselves, though her eyelids have turned heavy.
“Sleep,” I murmur against her throat.
“And forfeit my next orgasm?” she whines. “You promised me as many as I wanted.”
“I’ll owe you.”
She laughs. “You’ll be in debt forever.”
“A debt I’m happy to carry. You should rest.”
Kalta props herself up on an elbow, and her gaze sweeps my body again. She traces the jut of my hipbone, fingers trailing up the sharp edge of my ribs. The wild pull between us sated for now, her attention turns from lust to concern. Pinched eyebrows, lips pressed to a thin line.
“Yasmine . . .” she begins carefully. “Your family does care about you, you know.”
I clench my teeth against a bitter reply. They’re still sharp. “I know,” I say instead.
“When I was talking with your mom . . .” She pinches one of my braids, studying it as she runs her fingers down its length. “It’s obvious she’s worried about the way you struggle with yourself.”
“The way I struggle,” I repeat flatly.
Kalta pinches another braid. “Do you think maybe . . .”
Shiara’s victorious howl pierces the night. Back early. She must’ve claimed the deer, which means she’ll gloat for the next week.
I click off the bedside lamp and huddle beneath the covers. In the dark, the weight of Kalta’s worried gaze remains.
“Hold me?” I ask, voice muffled by the pillows.
She kisses my temple. “I’d love to.”
The wolf dreams of the hunt. She is thin and hungry, but she will run until dawn if she must.
Easy prey is on her mind.
She never takes down the deer, and now, alone, she has no choice but to look for smaller, weaker targets.
Waning moonlight is more than enough for her to see by. She’d usually avoid the bright, unnatural lights of a human settlement and the risk they imply, but a musky animal odor draws her curiosity. She skulks into the open, out of the cover of trees and shadows, and tests the wind for more information. No people about. Hay. Manure. Old blood. Chickens boarded up in wood. Too much trouble to get to. But the goats in a pen. Five.
She waits behind a machine. This one has a wedge attached to the front. It is larger than the ones her packmate works. Though this place gives her cover, the wind is not in her favor here. She needs to move.
In the wood box, the chickens rustle their wings, cluck agitation. Her mind turns on her next. An instinct to run—not toward the goats but back into the woods. She shakes herself.
Not a dream. She is so used to only being free to run in dreams.
This night air is real. The mud beneath her paws, real. Even better. She will not let her other half continue to starve them. She dreamed of blood in her mouth, and she will have it.
Taking up the chickens’ early warning, the goats huddle and bleat their concern. Frustration twitches her tail, the only movement she allows herself. They would not be in this situation if not for the other half. The other half always holds them back. Her timid nature makes them a bad hunter. The wolf shakes off a growl. She must act now—dart under the wood planks, take a goat, drag it into the safety of the woods.
The cavernous structure full of hay scent casts a shadow over a corner of the pen, but the goats are well aware of her now. She is relieved none of her pack are here to see her undignified wiggle under the wood. A goat screams. Fear scatters them, but there is no challenge here. This is not a hunt. Her prey has nowhere to go. For a moment, she hesitates. Is it shameful to kill one this way? The humans trapped them for her.
But the hunger.
If she can resist the other half, perhaps they can keep this meal. She will eat fast, for them both.
Screaming jolts me awake. Cold dawn. Skin sticky with blood. Tang of raw flesh on my tongue.
I leap to my feet before thinking to check whether I’m wounded. My back slams into a splintery fence. The woman screams again. Her wide eyes have seen a monster.
I glance down at myself—fully human but nude. Around me, carnage. Hooved bodies ripped open, intestines sprawling in the mud. My stomach roils. Too full. I vomit, not out of fear of my body but because the wolf, desperate and overeager, gorged us sick. Blood and viscera spew from my mouth. The woman screams again.
What girl is capable of something like this?
When the woman gathers herself enough to start calling a man’s name for help, I go for the fence, planting a hand on a post and heaving my sick body over in a clumsy bound. I fall when I land, but I don’t vomit again. The wolf doesn’t push forward. She knows well enough not to shift us when people are present. In fact, she likely panicked and shoved me forward when she realized she was about to be caught.
I stumble for the woods, each step faster than the last. I run. For a few precious minutes, I am only instinct. I am freed from the weight of implications and consequences. I have one goal. I am a wild girl, and the sunrise chases me home.
As I near the trailer, a tug in my chest staggers me. I trip over my own feet.
Where where where? Yasmine where where where?
Desperation chokes me. Kalta’s panic has inflamed the bond. A low branch swats me in the face. I fall. I sob. I scream. The ragged cry in my chest is unrecognizable, both animal and human.
Yasmine where where—
A racket in the distance. Voices.
I stop screaming only because I must vomit again. The heel of my palm throbs. Cold earth. Scraped knees.
Pounding steps. The worst of the pain in my chest eases. Through the blur of tears, I know Kalta is upon me. She’s outrun even Shiara. Mom follows last. Kalta crushes me against her with a force that knocks me breathless. Her questions are fast.
“She saw my face, she saw my face,” is all I can say. I cling to Kalta. “She saw my face.”
Kalta attempts to soothe me, combing her fingers through my braids, but blood has clotted them together. Despite the mess I’ve made, my body calms in her presence, the bond no longer feeding me her confused fear.
Shiara stands behind Kalta with her arms crossed, looking as casual as she does when telling a buddy what’s wrong with their car. I don’t know whether to be relieved or offended that I’m no more concerning than a broken-down Grand Am. Upon seeing the blood, Mom, however, takes a step back as if she doesn’t know me anymore. The look is enough to set my heart pounding again. I blabber an apology, and when she shakes her head, something in my chest breaks. The tears rush back. I reach for her, a plea.
She hesitates. Her question is a whisper. “Who did you kill?”
Now I understand. She’s thinking of Shiara. She’s thinking of the spine, the subsequent days and weeks of holding our breath and waiting to be found out.
Shiara wrinkles her nose, and the tension breaks. “Goats, by the smell of it.”
Mom sighs relief, and Shiara looks—hurt? The expression on her is unfamiliar, a flicker of tension around her eyes, there and gone. She doesn’t look at Mom.
“Go get cleaned up,” she says to me, nodding back toward the trailer. “I’ll fix your hair.”
7
Toothpaste has lost its flavor. I can’t get the taste of blood out of my mouth no matter how hard I scrub, no matter how long I rinse. As soon as I shut off the tap, I apply more toothpaste to the brush and try again. I spit, and instead of white foam, blood spatters into the sink, fresh and red.
“Yasmine?”
I startle. Kalta stands in the bathroom doorway. Her gaze meets mine in the mirror. I glance back to the sink and find the blood gone.
“You’ve been brushing your teeth for, like, fifteen minutes,” she says gently. Her frown deepens. “We need to get out of here.”
“Out of . . . the house?”
“Out of town.”
I replace my toothbrush in the holder. Its handle is smudged red. Next to Shiara’s, it looks like a murder weapon.
“You said someone saw your face?” asks Kalta.
I nod, still staring at the toothbrush. My flight behind me, consequence crashes down.
“So she found you among the goats . . . like this?”
“I killed all of them,” I whisper, piecing my memory and the wolf’s together. “The wolf has never binged.”
“But you do.” Kalta says it without judgment, and I still want to hide from her. “The wolf is you, Yasmine.” I don’t realize I’m trembling until Kalta rests a hand atop mine on the counter. “I want to help. Is that okay?” she asks.
