Page 34 of Untethering Dark

“You sure?” She searched his eyes, concern still lining her brow. “It can wait until tomorrow.”

“I have to know.”

He led the way onward, cautious and head on a swivel, but they didn’t have to go far. The trail cut a straight path, stopping only a few meters away, and ending in a crimson patch of snow. Far too much blood had been spilled for its owner to have survived, but not so much that he thought there was more than one slain.

There were no drag marks or a body. Gudariks looked up, half expecting to see a drained carcass hanging above them. But there was just an empty tree canopy and a star-filled sky.

What had the humans slaughtered? And where was the rest of their unlucky victim?

Crouching down, he touched his fingers to the bloodied snow, then his tongue, letting his acute sense of taste guide him to answers. Fear. Agony. The feeling, rather than the word, echoed on repeat:Why? Why? Why?The source wasn’t human. From the corner of his eye, Gudariks watched Astrid frown as she picked up a tuft of gray fur, the skin still attached.

As the truth sank in, rage rippled through him.

Wolf.

“Endangered” was the word the forest rangers used to describe the species’ declining population.

“What is it?”

“They slew a wolf.” Fury bristled across his skin and threatened to raze his control. He sank his claws into the earth to keep himself rooted in place.

There was a fierce clench to Astrid’s jaw, but her voice remained calm. “They’ll know no mercy when they’re found.”And something told him that she intended to participate in executing that vengeance.

What a glory it would be to watch her slay the forest’s enemies, but right now it fed his anger, every inch of him trembling with it.

If he wasn’t careful and didn’t try to leash his emotions, the egregious killing would set him off onto a rampage, hell-bent on destruction and too far gone to have any thought as to who or what got in his way. Astrid didn’t deserve that. And neither did his forest or its inhabitants.

Tearing his eyes from the spilled blood, he muttered through gritted teeth, “Who would do this?”

Astrid’s expression was grim. “Poachers. A friend of mine from the park service mentioned there’ve been reports of them up north. I suppose our mutual, cigarette-smoking acquaintance is one of them.”

Normally that answer would satisfy him. “Poachers who also happen to know powerful magic? And can vanish into thin air?”

Doubt crossed her face. “Yeah, that’s odd. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I’ll warn her. Make a trip down the mountain in the morning.” Her gaze dipped to his buried claws. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m starting to feel a little wild,” he admitted, head tilting with an involuntary twitch. It was followed by a tremor that overtook his arms. He needed to get himself under control.

The proximity to blood wasn’t helping.

Tucking her thermos inside her coat, Astrid stood, holding out her hands to him, palms facing up. “Why don’t we go somewhere untainted and sit down for a bit?”

The way she gently but firmly made the suggestion sliced through his anger, a voice of reason while he scrambled for his.

Extracting his claws from frozen ground, he took her hands, and she pulled him up.

“Come,” she said, only letting go of one to retrieve her ax. “There’s a pond nearby I like to visit when I need to think and am sick of staring at the same four walls.”

Although he knew which pond she spoke of, he let her lead the way, finding comfort in the steady tug of her hand. So small—two of her fingers pressed together were the width of one of his—but not frail. Subsisting in the forest kept her grip strong, and there was a rough patch of calluses that lightly scraped his palm, not unlike his own.

He saw the chopped piles of wood outside her cottage and the carefully tended garden, had tasted her baking and the meat procured from her hunting efforts, felt the sting of her spell craft.

These were not idle hands.

Did they ache as his did at the end of a long day?

But where his touch burned hot, hers was cool. Smooth, where he was furred. So many similarities but so many contrasts too.

Their walk to the pond wasn’t far, but it provided just enough distance between them and the campsite for new scents to wash away the wolf’s suffering.

---