Page 51 of Ravaged Wolf
This isn’t working, and I don’t know what to say next because what could you possibly say next? There are no words, there will never be any words, this is a terrible, stupid, useless mistake.
His clenched jaw tics as he stands, frozen perfectly still. His chest doesn’t even rise.
I raise my palms in the air. I don’t mean any harm. I’m just a walking, talking decaying albatross.
Behind me, another twig snaps, and I know it’s Pritchard or Nia, but in the silence, it has the effect of a gunshot. I yelp.
Trevor startles and drops his hammer. It hits the plywood with a ringing thud. My nerves are strung so tight that I scream. Fear floods my system, and my wolf, who had been avidly watching the proceedings from the very edge of the border between us, senses an opening.
She leaps. I’m distracted. For the first time since that horrible night, she thrusts herself into our skin.
I’m vaguely aware of the pain as my bones crack and rearrange, but mostly, I’m mesmerized by the expressions breaking across Trevor’s face in waves. Alarm as he scans the clearing for the threat. The realization that the threat was him. Devastation. Despair.
I shake my head, opening my mouth to explain, but I’m inside now, and my wolf has her own mind. She races up to the cottage construction, jumps to prop her forepaws on the foundation, and begins to yip and snap at Trevor as if she hasn’t seen him in forever, and she has so much to tell him—so many bones to pick with him—that she can’t stop for breath. Her tail swishes like crazy as she tries to push herselfup to the platform, but she’s too small, and can’t get enough leverage.
Trevor’s brow knits. His wolf sees his opening. Trevor’s irises blow up, and seconds later, his wolf surges from his skin, bursting through the seams of his jeans and wriggling loose from his toolbelt. Immediately, he howls and bolts for my wolf, his paws skittering on the plywood. I brace myself, crab walking back as fast as I can, away from the boundary between us. My wolf stretches her spine, straining toward him, yowling at him like he’s a wayward pup.
He leaps down to our level, and she attacks him, butting him with her forehead and burrowing her snout under his chin, howling and yipping, prancing as she knocks him off his balance. He tries to mark her back, to sniff and lick her face, but he doesn’t have a chance against her. She’s a fur tornado. He chases her with his snout, but she’s half his size and turning him in circles.
Eventually, he gives up and sprawls on his back, panting, and lets her sniff and nip and jump on his exposed belly with both front paws, oofing a little each time, content to lie there and sneak a lick in when her face comes close enough to his happy, gaping mouth.
They know each other. How? Through the bond? I’ve dreamt of his wolf over the years, but I never remember much, and what I did remember faded quickly once I was awake. Does she think she knows him because we dreamed about him?
Whatever the reason, she’s comfortable enough to stick her noseanywhere, and she’s as mad as hell that he’s been gone and equally ecstatic to see him. Inside, my face burns, but she’s shameless.
Luckily, she’s calming down, settling into the work of nuzzling him from tip to tail, but every few minutes, she seemsto remember she’s pissed, and she’ll growl and snap a few times. Each time, without fail, he bares his neck, and then twists himself to nudge her until she’s coaxed back to her grooming.
His wolf is so chill. When my wolf takes a momentary break and rests her head on his chest, I can hear his heart pounding a mile a minute, but he doesn’t make any sudden moves or dominate her with his size. I’ve seen my mom’s wolf groom my dad’s. If she stops before he’s happy, his wolf nips her. I’ve seen him draw blood.
Trevor himself was chill, too. In the very beginning, he didn’t push. He let me come to him. I was so snobby, ignoring him those first few days, acting like I was better, and he never let it bother him, not that he let on. Did it hurt him, though? Is that why he was so angry in rut?
My blood runs cold, and inside my wolf, I huddle further away, but if she can feel my unease, she doesn’t care.
She’s finally content that she’s covered every inch of him in her scent, so she lays her chin on his belly and watches him watch her. His tail lazily slaps the ground. A chickadeechick-a-dee-deeson a branch high overhead. Only onedee. That means the danger isn’t too bad, probably only the two wolves messing around underneath her.
My wolf dozes for a while, exhausted by her enthusiasm. When she wakes a few minutes later, Trevor’s wolf is still watching her, his mouth curving dopily. She yawns and stands, and he clambers to his feet. While she shakes out her fur, he trots toward the woods and barks at her to follow. She does without hesitation.
She trusts him implicitly. He’s big enough to protect her, and there is no doubt in her mind that he’d defend her with his life. She has no picture in her mind of his eyes bleeding black, no muscle memory of his claws piercing her hip flesh.
I shudder inside her. As he trots off between the trees, I watch her run with him, and it feels like a movie, and I’m inthe back row. No, I’m up in the projection booth, peering through the little window. It’s safe. But lonely.
He leads her deeper into the woods, the trees growing closer together the farther we get from the old den. She follows at his heels as he weaves and ducks and dashes, showing her all kinds of treasures—a blackberry bramble that smells faintly of red fox. A hollow log that reeks of possums. A hole under an aspen tree with the scent of old rodent layered with fresh garter snake.
Pausing at a shallow, quick running stream, he yips at her to drink. She does, and then yips back at him to do the same. After they’ve both had their fill, he leads her on along the marked boundary of Old Den’s territory. At one point, he urges her up a steep hill to show her a crack in a rocky outcropping, and then spends three solid minutes alternating between howling at the cave entrance and casting her an impassioned, threatening glare that should, by all rights, have her baring her neck.
She doesn’t. She smells the long-gone bear who must’ve slept there over winter, and she doesn’t appreciate being treated like a pup with no sense. She trots toward the cave opening just to mess with him, and he clamps his jaws around her back leg, gently pulling her away while whining a plea around his full mouth.
She lets him, but she makes herself dead weight so it’s as hard for him to drag her as possible. He spends the next ten minutes nosing at her leg as they continue on their explorations, double and triple checking that he didn’t hurt her with his fangs.
She’s basking in his attention. If it wanders for even a second when a crow caws or a leaf rustles, she whines, and he immediately trots closer, brushing her side and nuzzling her face, laying his scent thicker.
He isn’t submissive, though. He grumbles at her whenshe gets a few feet ahead and he feels she’s ventured too far, and if he doesn’t like the looks of the nook or cranny that she’s investigating, he’ll growl at her, and she’ll back off right away. She’s bold, a hundred times bolder than me, but she does trust him, and if he doesn’t like the looks of something, that’s good enough for her.
As the sun sets, our wolves keep going. Neither of them has any interest in turning around. They’re alone in the world and perfectly content. He catches a fat squirrel for dinner and lets her have the legs and backstrap, making do with the ribs and organ meat.
One by one, the stars come out, and the woods fill with croaks and flutters and hoots. I’ve never been outside at night in the woods like this. I’m on edge, jumping at every noise and checking that Trevor’s wolf isn’t worried. My wolf, on the other hand, is having the time of her life. Her nose and ears sharpen as the darkness grows, and she treads along in the path he’s blazing, happy to take it all in.
He doesn’t take us beyond Old Den territory, but we meander for hours until her paws ache and her pace slows. My wolf doesn’t want the night to end, but she’s tired. She begins to whine, and not long after, he finds us a leaf-filled ditch next to a large, rounded stone, partially hidden by a chokecherry thicket.
