Page 77 of Rune

The sound gave me strength. I steadied my vision, lifted my weapon, and threw it.

Fortune wasn’t on my side today. The wolf twisted at the right moment, allowing the axe to clip against its leg before sailing by. It’d garner him a limp but little more.

Ve took his sword and drove it into the beast’s belly.

That ought to kill any creature. But Asgardian wolves must be built differently, because this one did not fall. Instead, it turned on Ve and growled, sword still in his flesh, leaving Ve defenseless.

I saw the moment his eyes flicked to my axe. It was nearby. He could grab it to defend himself.

His hand flinched, then withdrew. He would not touch an axe, even to save himself. The wolf descended again, sinking his teeth into Ve’s thigh.

His cry this time was more painful.

Satisfied, the beast turned to me. I fumbled for a stick—anything to protect myself—but came up empty. His steps must have been quick, but to me they were an eternity—each one slow and looming and inevitable, and haunting me with what would be my final moments. I had little time to think of anything else but Ve and the future we might have had, trapped in that thought of: he’ll never know how I felt.

All I could see were the beast’s yellow eyes. I kicked, summoning strength to fight one more time, though it refused to listen.

Then, before he could claim my life, the wolf let out a yelp of surprise, then a pitiful whine, before falling with a thud to the forest floor. His body was lifeless. His eyes still.

Behind him, Ve stood, shaking, with my axe in hand. His fingers were white, and his face drained of color.

I clambered to my feet to draw close to him. Blood ran in nauseating amount from his shoulder and his thigh, but his sole focus was on my weapon in his fingers, the same kind of weapon that had killed his sister and he’d sworn to never touch. My chest twisted, gutted that I’d forced him to pick one up.

“Are you okay?” His whisper was barely audible, as if he were hardly here.

I slid my hands to his to ease the axe away. “I am now. Thanks to you.” As soon as he let go, I tossed the weapon aside and filled his hands with mine. “You saved my life.”

Finally, his dark eyes settled on mine, and it was like storms ceasing.

A moment later, he collapsed to his knees. I knelt beside him, running a tentative hand over the wounds on his thigh. They were deep. Too deep. A shiver ran down my spine like a snake of death shuddering within me. My words shook. “Can you heal these?”

“You first.” His voice was strained as he reached his shaky hands to my side to peel up my shirt where the wolf had dug his claws into my side, finding the skin cut open and bleeding. Ve looked at me as if feeling nothing of his own pain.

I winced as his hands met my skin.

“It’ll be over in a moment,” he whispered. My fingers met his, and braced themselves there. A tingling feeling swept through my body as his eyes shut, and I could feel my skin piecing itself back together like fibers being pulled tight and wrapped back amongst each other until things were set right, and the sharp pain was no longer so unmanageable. In a few moments, it was hardly there at all.

I looked down. The wound was nothing more than a scar that appeared much like the ones on my arm as if it’d been there for ages and not from minutes ago.

“Now you,” I pressed, taking his hands from me and putting them on his thigh.

He grinned. “As you command.” Through the crack in his smile, I saw the agony of the claw-shaped tear in his leg, but slowly, it healed, and his face relaxed.

“Now your shoulder.” I brought his hands there, and he healed that spot as well.

I sighed. The world around me still spun, and even though the danger was gone, my head felt thick. But we were safe. Ve was alive and the wolf was dead.

Still on our knees, he pulled me into him. His body shook under my touch. I couldn’t know the magnitude of that moment as he picked up my axe, but one thought rang in my head. He did it for me. “If you hadn’t come,” I whispered, “I’d be dead.”

His gaze flicked to my weapon, tossed beside us. “I’m glad you’re alive. The free wolves don’t usually venture this far west.” Now his eye shifted to the beast. Lying still, I got a better look at the size of it, and shuddered again. It was as wide as the largest shield, with legs like tree trunks and a nuzzle like a long dagger, lined with razor sharp teeth. “I can’t guess what brought them here.”

“Is it one of Odin’s?”

Ve shook his head, absentmindedly running his hands up and down my arms like he was still checking if I was okay. “The free wolves are cousins of Odin’s wolves, but they do not obey his commands. Nor do they take any orders. None have trained them, though many have tried. For them to come here, it is a vendetta of their own making.”

A thought slivered into my mind, crawled forth from the part that once believed I was Astrid.

As a child, Astrid had attacked one of Odin’s wolves, and it fought back. In retaliation, Odin put it to the blade.

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