Page 28 of Raised By Wolves

I stay there as we sprint down the back straightaway.Thanks for blocking the wind for me, Mac!

He doesn’t realize I’m there. We lap the stragglers from group three.

A wolf knows that if it follows a herd of elk long enough, eventually one of them’s going to panic. If it leaves the trail, it’s dead meat.

“Hi,” I call to Mac’s back.

He flinches like he’s been hit. He puts on another burst of speed. He thinks it’s going to be enough. But I know it’s not.

As we round the last curve, I swing wide. I pass him on the right. Then I’m down the final stretch alone, lungs screaming. Arms pumping. Feet pounding. Hair streaming out behind me.

People are shouting, but I can’t tell what they’re saying. When I cross the finish line first, everyone goes quiet.

“Holy shit,” someone whispers. “Did youseethat?”

Mac crosses the line five full seconds behind me. He stumbles to the edge of the track and bends over, hands on his thighs. He’s gasping. Wheezing. Cursing whenever he can get enough air in his lungs to talk.

My heart pounds and my throat’s raw, but I feel amazing. Iwalk toward him, smiling. And I lean in close so only he can hear me. “I guess you had to watch my back for me, didn’t you?”

And then I leave him there, still hunched over—and now throwing up into the grass.

CHAPTER 21

HOLO’S WATCHING A raven preen itself when Lacey pulls up in her hatchback. The old Volkswagen belches a cloud of exhaust. Holo chokes on it. He’s not used to machine and engine smells. He hates them. They sear his nose and burn his throat.

“Hey, you, how was school?” Lacey asks, beaming.

Holo blinks. How’s he supposed to answer that? He’d felt trapped. Scared. Confused. The food was weird and soft—though he ate it, whatever it was (some kind of meat, sitting in a salty, brown puddle)—and he’d had to take something called a quiz. He’d gotten yelled at for growling. And then he’d met another Hardy, younger than the big one but just as mean. Logan Hardy had said that all wolves should be shot on sight, and that anyone who thought otherwise deserved to get their freaky asses kicked.

“Ummm… It was okay,” Holo tells Lacey.

“Good! Where’s Kai?”

Holo glances back toward the school. He hasn’t seen hissister since Mrs. Simon led him away from her after lunch. But the bell rang twenty minutes ago, and he watched all the other kids go home. He can’t help the thought he has next:What if she ran?

But she wouldn’t, not without him.

Would she?

The raven rasps from the tree branch. Holo looks up to watch it flap away and disappear into the blue sky.

“Should I go in and look around?” Lacey asks.

Holo shakes his head. She wouldn’t be able to find Kai unless Kai wanted to be found. And he doubts that she does. “We have to wait,” he says.

Lacey says, “All right, we’ve got time. Hop in, why don’t you?”

“No thanks.” He doesn’t want to breathe car air. He doesn’t want to hear the car radio. He stands there, fists clenched.Kai, where are you?

Lacey sings along to the radio. Something about a guy named Bruno and how no one’s supposed to talk about him.

Kai, you didn’t leave me, did you?

Did you?

Ten terrible minutes later, his sister finally appears. Relief floods Holo’s body.She didn’t run. But when she gets close, Holo sees that she has thunder in her eyes. Kai’s scary when she looks like that, so he doesn’t tell her how worried he was. He just presses his shoulder tight against hers.

She doesn’t speak the whole car ride back to Chester and Lacey’s house. She stares out the window. But that’s okay, Holo tells himself. They’ve gone days without talking before. Nature doesn’t care about words.

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