Page 30 of The Alpha Dire Wolf
I was meeting Charlene for lunch to do some more catching up. She’d also promised to ask around her little group to see if anyone else had heard anything about the guardian.
“What kinds of things do you need?”
I listed it off.
“I c’n git you that. C’mon.” Shuffling down the counter, he grabbed something out of a bin, tossing it on the counter. The circular disk was clearly labeled as the combo-detector. The yellowed plastic left me wondering if it would work, but the price was good and cheap.
“Size seven?” he asked, leading me down an aisle dedicated entirely to boots.
“And a half,” I confirmed. “I’m impressed.”
He bobbed his head. “Was’n a quartermaster. Ye learn dem things.” A moment later, without having to search, he thrust a box into my hands. “Boots. Fer forest werk.”
“Thank you.”
The man looked me up and down with a clinical eye, like a doctor, not an ogre. “What kind’o ferrest stuff you need?”
“Better than this.” I waved at my current outfit of leggings, red shirt and sneakers.
“Ye huntin’?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Walking. Hiking. Exploring. That sort of thing.”
“O’coarse. This way.”
Lightweight but sturdy feeling pants made their way into my arms, followed by two shirts, and a vest studded with pockets. A jacket of stiff fabric completed the ensemble.
“Thank you.”
“Yer gonna want sum socks too,” he said, digging in another box. “What kind’o pertection do ye wants?”
“Per … what?”
“Pro-tec-tion.” The shopkeeper sounded it out formally, his face twisting even further as he did. How much had that cost his pride?
“Protection? What do you mean?”
His sigh was heavy enough to shrink me by several inches. The look of utter contempt that followed, as if I was the biggest imbecile he’d ever seen, didn’t help much either.
“Them woods r’nt natural. Ma’am.” He shook his head heartily, strands of thinned hair bouncing. “Nope. Not’t’all. Them wolves in there, they big ones. I seen more’n a few o forrest in the army. Nuttin like this one. I ain’teversee nothing like it. Somethin’ different about it. You don’t want to get caught in there alone.”
He said the last words in perfect, unfiltered English. Probably so I would actually pay attention without having to work to understand him through his accent.
“Take pertection.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, thinking about the bear with red eyes. “Probably a good idea. A knife, maybe?”
“Good call. I’ll git ye that. Some spray too. Incase ya dun wanna look it in the eyes.”
“Right.” I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and then inhaled, trying to steady myself.
Easy. It’s just stories.
The wolf in my mind turned its head, gold and blue eyes burning bright.
When everything was piled on the counter, I had to fight back second thoughts. This was insane! I wasn’t going to war. I didn’t want to hurt or kill anything in the forest.
Not having it was even less sane, however, which is why it all got rung up on my credit card after all, and not tossed back into whatever pile it had come from.
