Page 104 of Raised By Wolves

A human rarely looks at another human like that.

“I love you,” I whisper.

Beast whines and her ears pitch forward. I reach out and touch her ruff. She smells like grass, like blood, like warm wet fur.

Wendy turns to me. Her face, like mine, is streaked with tears. “They have to go now,” she says in a choked voice. “They have to go far away.”

“How are you going to tell them that?” I ask. Knives of grief pierce my throat.

Wendy doesn’t answer. I suppose she doesn’t know how to explain it. But I know her bond with the wolves is deep—as deep as her bond is with us. She’s known them since they were born. She knew their mothers and their fathers and their sisters and their brothers. There is a language, somewhere between human and wolf, that they alone speak.

Wendy flicks her hand and the wolves gather around her. She crouches down among them. Holo and I watch as their tails stop wagging. They hold themselves at complete attention. Listening. Understanding.

Finally Wendy stands. She gives three harsh claps that echo through the silent morning. “Go,” she screams. “Go!”

There’s just a single, tiny moment of hesitation. And then the wolves turn as one, slipping away into the brush like shadows.

Vanishing. Forever.

And I howl my sadness to the sky.

CHAPTER 81

I’M LEANING CLOSE to the bathroom mirror, trying to put on lipstick. Lacey told me I should look nice, so that’s what I’m doing, even though I don’t understand why looking nice involves painting my lips a different color. I also put on mascara, which makes my eyes look extra big. A little scared, too—or maybe that’s just how they’d look anyway.

“Kai, we have to go!” Lacey calls. “We can’t be late.”

I quickly finish swiping the red across my lips and then run down the steps two at a time. Holo, who’s waiting by the door, gives me a startled look.

“Did you put on makeup?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“In the pitch dark?” he says. “With your left hand?” Then he cracks up.

I snarl at him. How am I supposed to be good at it? I’ve never done it before. I grab a Kleenex on my way out and wipe everything off.At least my hair’s brushed, I think.

I’m also wearing a skirt for the first time in my life, plus apair of Lacey’s clogs. Holo’s got on a button-down shirt and a tie Lacey must’ve tied for him. It looks like it’s strangling him.

“You’re beautiful children,” she’d told us. “But you have to show them that you’recivilized.”

“Even if we’re not,” Holo had muttered.

Now, Lacey and the chief wear nervous expressions as we drive. Wendy sits in the back with us, dressed in Lacey’s clothes and twisting her hands together in worry. I feel sick—from being in the car, as usual, but also from fear. We’re headed to the county courthouse, where our future’s going to be decided by a bunch of strangers.

Holo whines softly as he stares out the window.

“Hush,” I tell him. “You have to remember to act human.”

Even if it’s too late for it to matter.

“Chester,” Lacey says, “you missed the street.”

The chief curses under his breath. Pulls a U-turn, makes a left, and then comes to a stop in front of a two-story brick building with white columns and an American flag hanging limply over the double front doors.

“I don’t want to be here, either,” Lacey says to us. “But everything’s going to be fine, I just know it.”

I hope she’s right.

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