Page 28 of Ravaged Wolf
Why. Was he bitten? Is he feral? Moon mad? She has her eyes closed tight, but she can feel the outside yawning around us like a void and the moon floating every inch of two hundred and fifty thousand miles away.
She’s angry at me. I ignored her and stayed away until it was too late. Now we’re here, alone, and nothing will ever be right or good again. Our mate is our enemy now. He hurt us, ripped us to pieces, betrayed us, and dumped us on the ground for other males to tend. How could he do it? How could he leave us like that?
She whines and shakes, and she can’t get warm.
Then her ears prick.
A click of claws on stone. A whiff of pepper, thyme, and sage. Our mate! Her heart leaps. And then she remembers.
He hurt us.
Heabandonedus.Twice. He left us on the concrete sidewalk, and before that, weeks ago, in the building that stinks like the fake pine and lemon that humans use to cover their tracks, he left us with the angry male who fathered us. Our mate doesn’t want us. In the woods, he told us to leave. To run.
My wolf curls tighter. The fur along her spine prickles, and a low growl sounds in her chest.
Click, click, clack.He’s coming closer. Slowly. Tentatively.
She whips her tail, warning him to stay away.
Click.
Clack.
He whines. He wants her to look at him.
She shoves her muzzle deeper into her chest. Traces of his fresh pain and grief still reach her nose.
Not fair!Sheis grieving.She’s in pain. She lifts her snout and snarls at him over her shoulder.
Sinking to his belly, he lowers his head, laying it flat on the rock. The wolf is as pretty as his human, with bluish-gray fur sprinkled with wheat the color of his hair and the same blue-gray eyes. He blinks at her mournfully. She tucks her muzzle back to her chest and closes her eyes.
He’s sorry, more than sorry—destroyed. What good will that do? She hurts so bad. She’s so alone. He didn’t stop this.
He crawls closer on his belly. She wants to turn on him, slash him with her claws, tear his flesh with her fangs and rip his heart from his chest, but she’s too fragile, too broken, too exhausted to move.
First, she feels the absence of cold. He’s blocking the wind with his body. Then, a minute or an hour or a day later—there’s no time in the dream—she feels a slight warmth on her back. She tries to snarl again, but it comes out as a sad, small whine. His chest rumbles as he closes the distance between them and curves his body around hers. His rumbles vibrate against her spine. If he means to soothe her, it won’t work. Nothing can help.
Whining low in his throat, he nudges her muzzle with his cold nose. She blindly snaps her teeth. He left before. Why won’t he leave now? His presence hurts. He’s trying to block the bond, but he’s a foolish male who thinks he can control nature, and don’t we all know now that’s impossible? His grief flows into her chest as his warmth sinks into her skin. She wishes she could drown in it.
He nudges her again and nips the tip of her ear. She twists her head, ready to snarl, ready to bite. He lifts his head and howls.Look. The Moon.
She glances up. Oh. The moon. How did it get so close? It’s huge and hanging so low in the sky, the tops of the trees on the far side of the river cast black shadows on its bottom curve like veins. Everywhere the current ripples, moonbeams scatter shiny pearls. It’s a dreamscape. No moon is that big, no night air is this crisp.
He lies his head back down on the stone. Exhausted, she rests hers on the crook of his neck. They both watch the moon as it slowly wanders westward. They’re torn to pieces, lost, hurt, and scared. She’s too tired to fight him, so they lie there, far away, in another world, together in the dark.
6
IZZY, THE PRESENT
If you stareat the white walls in my bedroom long enough and let your eyes slide out of focus, the walls ripple. I first noticed it during the weeks after I came home from the infirmary when Mom let me stay in bed all day. In the early days, I stared at the ceiling, but when she made me sit up and stacked my missing work from my final courses on a lap desk, I stared at the wall and watched the waves.
There’s no window in my room.
That was fine with me before Trevor when I was busy with school and my internship and piano and tennis. And it was fine with me after Trevor. I needed the dark. Mom would flick the light switch on with a huff, leave a tray with food or a basket of clean laundry, and as soon as she left, I’d drag myself out of bed and flick the lights off again.
I slept as many hours as my body would let me, and for some reason, I didn’t have nightmares—I had the most beautiful, vivid dreams. Magical dreams. The black outline of a mountain peak against a background of scattered stars. Purple asters bathed in moonlight. A soft brown doe with white spots grazing in a field of wildflowers beside her mother.
I can’t say they were a comfort. I always woke with an aching pain in my chest, but they were the only not-horrible thing in my life, and that was something. I still have the dreams, but not every single night, and they don’t leave me so bereft in the morning. Maybe because I’ve managed to numb everything—the good and the bad. The windowless room sure helped.
