chapter FORTY-ONE
• COLE •
This new concoction felt like poison.
Sometime after midnight, I stepped outside. It was black as death on the other side of the back door, but I listened to make certain I was alone. My stomach was tight with hunger, a sensation at once painful and productive. Concrete proof that I was working. The fasting had made me jittery and watchful, a cruel sort of high. I lay my notebook with the details of my experiments on the step so that Sam would know where I’d gone if I didn’t come back. The woods hissed at me. They didn’t sleep even if everyone else did.
I rested the needle against the inside of my wrist and closed my eyes.
My heart was already kicking like a rabbit.
In the syringe, the liquid was colorless as spit and thin as a lie. In my veins, it was razors and sand, fire and mercury. A knife notched every vertebrae in my spine. I had exactly twenty-three seconds to wonder if I’d killed myself this time and eleven more to realize that I was hoping I hadn’t. Three more after that to wish that I’d stayed in my bed. That left two to think holy shit.
I burst out of my human body, splitting my skin so fast that I felt it slough off my bones. My heart was exploding. Overhead, the stars wheeled and focused. I grabbed for the stair, the wall, the ground, anything that wasn’t moving. My notebook skidded off the back step, my body plummeting to join it, and then I was running.
I’d found it. The mixture I was going to use to jerk Beck from his wolf body.
Even as a wolf, I was still healing, joints knitting back together, skin stitching shut along my spine, cells reinventing themselves with every massive stride I took. I was an incredible machine. This wolf body I wore was keeping me alive even as it dragged at and stole my human thoughts.
You’re Cole St. Clair.
One of us had to be able to maintain our thoughts if we were going to move the wolves. Had to at least be able to remember enough to gather the wolves together, get them to one place. There had to be some way to convince a wolf brain to keep a simple goal.
Cole St. Clair
I tried to hold on to it. I wanted to hold on to it. What good was it, to make myself shift, to conquer the wolf for just a few moments, when I didn’t get to keep the triumph of it?
Cole
There was nothing these woods had to say that I couldn’t hear. The wind was screaming past my ears as I ran. My paws were sure over fallen branches and through brambles, toenails clicking when I scrambled across exposed rocks. The ground dropped out beneath me, dipping into a culvert, and I sailed over it. Halfway through the air, I realized I wasn’t alone. Half a dozen bodies leaped with me, light shapes in the dark night. Their scents identified them, more specific than names. My pack. Surrounded by these other wolves, I was secure, certain, invincible. Teeth snapped by my ear, playful, and images flashed between us: The culvert growing to a ravine. The soft ground where a dusty rabbit warren waited to be dug up. The sky, black and endless above us.
Sam Roth’s face.
I hesitated.
The images surged back and forth, harder to catch as most of the wolves left me behind. My thoughts were stretching larger to hold the concept of a name and a face. Sam Roth. I dropped to a walk, the image and the words held in my head until they had no association with each other. When one of the wolves doubled back to jostle against me, I snapped at it until it realized I was not up for a wrestle. The other wolf licked at my chin, confirming the dominance I already assumed. After a moment, I snapped at it again, just for some quiet. I padded back the way I had come, nose to the ground, ears pricked. I scouted for something I couldn’t quite understand.
Sam Roth.
I moved slowly through the dark woods, cautious. If nothing else, I hunted for an explanation for that image tossed to me: a human face.
My spine stung as my hackles rose, fast and inexplicable.
Then her body hit me.
The white she-wolf buried her teeth in my ruff as I staggered for my balance under her weight. She’d taken me by surprise and her grip wasn’t great, so with a snarl, I shook her off. We circled each other. Her ears were pricked, listening to my movement; the darkness masked me. Her white coat, on the other hand, stood out like a wound. Everything about her posture was aggressive. She didn’t smell afraid, but she wasn’t large. She would back down, and if she didn’t, the fight wouldn’t last long.
I underestimated her.
When she hit me the second time, her paws wrapped around my shoulders like an embrace, and her teeth found a hold beneath my jawbone. Her grip ground closer and surer to my windpipe. I let her push me onto my back so that I could kick her belly with my back legs. It only broke her hold for a moment. She was fast, efficient, fearless. She had my ear next, and I felt the heat exploding out of me before I felt the wetness of the blood. When I twisted away from her, it felt like my skin was shredding between her teeth. We charged up against each other, chest to chest. Seizing her throat, I crumpled skin and fur in my teeth, hanging on with all I was worth. She was out of my grip like she was water.
Now she had a hold on the side of my face, and her teeth scraped bone. She got a better grip, and this was the one that mattered.
My eye.
I scrambled backward, desperate, trying to dislodge her before she ruined my face, destroyed my eye. I had no pride. I whimpered and flattened my ears back, trying to submit, but she wasn’t interested. There was a snarl rippling out of her that vibrated through my skull. My eye would explode with the sound if she didn’t puncture it first.
Her teeth slid closer. My muscles were trembling. Bracing themselves already for the pain.
Suddenly she cried out and released me. I backed up, shaking my head, blood matting the side of my face, my ear still screaming pain. In front of me, the white wolf cowered submissively before a large gray wolf. A black wolf stood just behind him, ears pricked with aggression. The pack had returned.
The gray wolf turned toward me, and behind him, I saw the white wolf’s ears instantly lift from their position of surrender. Without his gaze on her, everything about her bristled with rebellion. Everything said I give up, for now, while you’re watching. Her eyes were unflinching on me. It was a threat, I understood now. I was meant to take my place below her in the pack, or someday fight her again. Maybe the pack wouldn’t be around then to stop her.
I wasn’t ready to back down.
I stared back.
The gray wolf took a few steps to me, passing me images of my torn face as he did. He nosed my ear cautiously. He was wary; I was smelling less and less of wolf and more and more of the thing I was when I wasn’t a wolf. My strange body was working hard to heal my face and to pull me back into a human. It wasn’t cold enough to keep me in this skin.
The white wolf stared at me.
I could feel that I didn’t have long. My brain was stretching again.
Beside me, the gray wolf growled, and I jerked until I realized that it was directed at the she-wolf. He stepped away from me, still growling, and now, the black wolf was growling, too. The white wolf stepped back. One step, then another. They were leaving me.
A shudder twitched through my body, ending just under my eye, stinging. I was shifting. The gray wolf — Beck — snapped at the white wolf, pushing her farther away from me.
They were saving me.
The white wolf met my gaze one last time. This time.