Page 104 of The SnowFang Storm

The airfield had exactly one runway, gravel, and unlike a lot of other airstrips, was actually plowed. Sort of. A small cluster of buildings sat off to the west side. As we came lower, I saw two snowmobiles parked outside of one of the buildings, and a little trail of smoke rising up from a pipe in the roof.

The landing was a bit bouncy. Terry seemed disappointed that Hamid did not puke, and I didn’t spook.

The exquisite cold grabbed hold of me like cruel fingers, poking at my eyes and nostrils and tearing at my lips even through the warmth of my scarf. The pure scent of woods and smoke and mountains and stone flooded my system.

There was no hangar, just tie downs for little planes. There was a single trailer with a generator, and then a larger, permanent structure ten feet opposite it. Terry pointed to the permanent structure. “That’s where you’re gonna meet. We’ll be in the trailer. Two hours and I’m out of here.”

“If we’re still here in an hour, we’re screwed,” I said. My goal was twenty minutes.

No road, just paths cut and packed down in the snow. The permanent structure was the size of a doublewide trailer, with some antennas swaying off the top. The two snowmobiles were parked out front, and the scent of wolves was thick enough to smell through MoonDark.

I walked up the old wood steps. The thin door rattled on fragile hinges.

Inside was a small bar, drafty but warm enough to take off my coat. Three stools, and two small round tables with four beaten-up chairs. The man behind the counter looked at me. Wolf. Didn’t know him. Struck me as not the guy I’d spoken to the day before. I deposited the doughnuts on the bar and went to greet the only other soul.

“Winter.” Spring stood as I entered. “Oh Gaia, you’ve grown up. Well, you didn’t grow up. Not tall, are you? Didn’t get your dad’s height.”

“Hi, Spring.” I hugged her.

“This hair,” she touched my red hair, “like your mom’s. Darker red, though.”

“Eh, it gets a little help now and again.” And by now and again, I meant every two weeks given how much I sweated on it, how fragile red dye was, and how flawless it had to be for New York City.

She wrinkled her nose. “Do I smell MoonDark?”

I’d swallowed my pride and been taking the GranitePaw compound, which was better than Cerys’ stash, but a higher dose than what I’d been taking, and it still laced my scent. “My mate’s a city wolf, and my veil’s always been thin.”

“I remember,” she said with a warm smile and another hand stroking my hair. “Once you shifted, you just dropped back and forth for anything. Autumn just about lost her mind worrying about you.”

“I’m fine, this is just an abundance of caution,” I lied.

Spring sighed. “Terrible. At least you’ve got an excuse to not take it for a few days. What’s it like having a city wolf as a mate? And these nails. Ug.”

“Part of the uniform. It’s been a hell of an adjustment.” Those were not lies. “I’m probably getting MoonDark next to my toast because I’m such an unrepentant feral I make everyone a wee bit nervous.”

Spring grinned, then gestured. “So is it like you remember? Alaska, I mean.”

“Like I never left,” I said as she fetched a carafe of coffee from the counter. “But I don’t remember too much.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said gently, a sigh on her voice and a strange, fond regret on her face. “I’d forgotten how little you were when SilverPaw left.”

“Eight, so not that little, I guess.” I unwound my scarf the rest of the way and hung it by the door.

Spring sighed again. “You look so much like your mother.”

If she kept talking about Mom, I was going to get all misty, and it was too cold to cry, and I didn’t have enough time. I had to get what I needed to get and get out before the guilt gnawed me alive from the inside. “You look like Mom.”

Spring’s hair was reddish-brown, instead of the deep red of my mother, but they both had the same dainty features and fine bones, and we all had the same green-blue eyes.

She sighed a third time, her eyes very sad. She gestured to the emptiness outside the window. “So that’s what brought you out this way? BlizzardFall?”

BlizzardFall? What did they have to do with anything? They’d been killed off in a war when I’d been in diapers. The occasional BlizzardFall survivor popped up but the pack itself was long gone. “BlizzardFall? No, but it is about territory, in a roundabout way.”

She looked at my acrylic nails, painted a bright gleaming green, and said, “Go on.”

“It’s sort of sensitive,” I added, prodding the words like trying to find a stud in a wall.

She set a cup of coffee in front of me. “Must be sensitive and important for you to rush out here all this way in winter.”

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