Page 35 of Way of the Wolf

“That won’t be necessary. I have an excellent immune system, nearly as vigorous and virile as the rest of me, so I heal quickly. I’ll remain here snuggled up to your first-aid kit. I do have a few other fang punctures to attend.” Duncan waved to his jeans and whatever gouges lay under the denim.

“Attend away, but do it in your van.” I grabbed the kit, pointed to the door, and offered him a hand up.

“You’re kicking me out? I was very careful not to bleed on your furniture.” Duncan looked at the crinkled paper towels blanketing the couch, then licked his thumb and rubbed what might have been blood off the edge of the coffee table.

I made a note to sanitize the furniture later. “I’m going to lock up my apartment while I’m gone.”

He was too interested in the wolf case for me to leave it where he could find it. Maybe I would even put it in the glove compartment of my truck and take it with me. Of course, bringing a magical item into werewolf territory might not be a good idea either. The pack would be able to sense its magic, and if it turned out that Mom was gone and my cousins were all gunning for me…

“I can lock your door on my way out,” Duncan offered, his eyebrows up, his face the picture of innocence.

I didn’t trust that look—or him—and gripped his elbow to help him to the door—or maybe hoisthimoutthe door. “You can’t lock a deadbolt on the way out, and this neighborhood isn’t as safe as it used to be.”

He opened his mouth as if he might protest further—whichmade me doubly suspicious about why he wanted to hang out here while I was gone.

“Besides,” I added, “you’re heading off with that list of ingredients to find me an alchemist who can make my potion, right?”

“You think I should do that when I’ve so recently been grievously injured?” He waved at his bandaged chest.

“After you spoke of the excessively virile vigor of your immune system? Yes, that should be easy.” I handed him the first-aid kit in case he needed to bandage anything else.

“Very well, my lady. I shall depart. Can I at least have some more of your fine chocolate to take with me? I haven’t eaten in some time.”

I was tempted to sayno, but he was doing me a favor. If he found a new alchemist to supply me with potions, I would buy him a whole stack of chocolate bars.

As I moved into the kitchen to snap off a couple more squares for him, I caught him gazing thoughtfully at my bedroom. Despite his proclamations of my beauty, I doubted his musings involved us naked together.

No, I decided. I wouldn’t leave the magical case in my apartment.

12

My truck carriedme off Highway 2 in Monroe, through the town, and to the north, where I headed down roads that I hadn’t driven in ages. The magical case wasn’t in my glove compartment. On the way out of the complex, I’d run into Bolin, who’d been leaving for the day, promising the prospective tenants had liked what they’d seen and would be back after they scrounged up money for the deposit. On a whim, hopefully not anunwisewhim, I’d given him the case and asked him to either research it or ask his father what it was.

Bolin’seyes hadn’t lit up with covetous interest when he’d regarded it. Instead, he’d called it a nice wolf box, then informed me that the word box came from the Greekpyxis, which meant a container made from boxwood, or maybe the Latinbuxus,which had the same meaning aspyxis.

Maybe it was strange that I trusted my new intern more than Duncan, but I’d gotten a feel for the kind of person Bolin was on Day 1. My read on Duncan was sketchy.Hewas sketchy.

A lot of houses had been built along the back roads since the last time I’d been through Monroe, but once I drove out intounincorporated territory and the pavement turned to gravel and pot-hole-filled dirt, the homes grew infrequent. Around town, there was a lot of farmland, but out here, forests and wetlands dominated, with trees growing close to the roads, evergreen branches blocking most of the night sky. Now and then, a dog barked at a fence, and houselights filtered through the woods, but I trusted my mother still didn’t have many neighbors.

She didn’t live in the home I’d grown up in. That had burned in a fire, possibly an arson, back when a rival pack, the Cascade Crushers, had competed for this territory. Since first arriving from the Old World generations before, our packs had feuded with each other, like the Hatfields and McCoys. Our territorial kind could start battles that lasted generations—until one pack was destroyed or driven out. Peace treaties were rare, though Raoul and I had once spoken of bringing our packs together. That hadn’t been meant to be.

By the time I’d left, the Crushers had departed for Canada, saying they longed for land where fewer humans intruded upon the forests and game was more plentiful. That might have been true, but they might also have been devastated by the loss of Raoul. They’d never come to me to speak of it, and I’d been too ashamed and scared to go to them.

A breeze pushed the clouds across the sky, and the nearly full moon peeked out, casting shadows between the trees and bathing the side of my face in its silvery light. It made my skin waken, as if the moon could convey the warmth of sunlight. For a werewolf, it almost did, though it wasmagicthat one felt, not the sun’s radiation.

My blood tingled in my veins, and an aliveness that I hadn’t felt in a long time crept into me. As I had long ago, I had the urge to change forms and run through the forest, to feel the autumn breeze caressing my face as I sought prey to hunt.

I swallowed, gripped the steering wheel tightly, and attemptedto sublimate that urge. I was coming out to get my questions answered, not to hunt, and definitely not to change into a wolf. If I needed meat, I could delve into the salmon-and-sausage gift box I’d picked up on the way out of town. At the last minute, I’d decided I should bring an offering that a carnivore would appreciate.

Ahead, my high beams played over a wooden address sign nailed to a tree. Above the house numbers, a wolf howled at the moon. It reminded me of the case, though the wolf on that was showing its pointed teeth rather than howling.

I turned up the winding dirt driveway, trees hemming it in on either side. As my headlights swung with the truck’s movement, they briefly highlighted two eyes in the distance. They disappeared from view almost as soon as I saw them, but nerves made my heart thump in my chest. The eyes hadn’t beenglowing, like those of the minions that had attacked me, but they might have belonged to a werewolf.

“Not that unusual,” I told myself.

Most of the younger generation of werewolves from our pack lived in the suburbs and were at least somewhat incorporated into human life, but they came out to visit and hunt. I suspected most of the family would be here for the full moon. Maybe some already were. My senses, feeling more alive out here, told me that more than one wolf lurked in the woods.

Mom’s two-room log cabin came into view, surrounded by evergreens that towered high, not allowing enough sunlight to filter down for a lawn. Mossy rocks framed the cleared gravel driveway near the front door, and fir and pine needles scattered the packed earth around the home’s stone foundation. A river rock chimney rose from the ground on one end of the cabin, and smoke wafted out of it. A dented Jeep Wrangler was parked in the driveway, a vehicle I didn’t recognize, but it looked like something Mom would own.

---