Page 73 of The SnowFang Storm

He gave me a look of dignified mortification. “I can bring down a buck on my own, thank you.”

“Then you know that the harrier has to get the prey into position or at least keep it running so it doesn’t trample the pack. It’s damn dangerous work, getting scuffed up shouldn’t shock anyone.”

“Scuffed up? Harriers can be seriously injured.” He was not the least bit mollified.

“Believe me, I know. I’ve been roughed up a few times.”

“And when you say that, you smell like an old wound.”

And it was too excruciating to talk about, and too damn humiliating, because I’d taken it at face value, even when that little voice in the back of my head had howled this is wrong. But it wasn’t like I had had a lot of options or choices, either. I couldn’t have escaped to college, or a trade, or even a mating. So… I just didn’t think about it.

Sterling held my hand even as I tried to tug free. “Whatever that wound is, it hurts worse than today. You can’t expect me to feel good about using you as a harrier when it’s obviously something that hurts.”

Fine. Might as well get the stupid story over with, and expose the raw wound. “I guess what EarthSpine told you was more or less right. I’m probably one of the best of my generation anywhere. I did all the demonstrations at the Meetings, and I even went on some of those hunts. Back of the pack, of course, but I was there. I made Solstice Hound—back of the pack—at sixteen, and Third Harrier at seventeen. Then eighteen came around, and it all ended. I put up with it until Solstice, when I didn’t make the pack, got up in front of everyone, named my accomplishments, demanded my due, and my father told me I hadn’t earned it.”

“Because you weren’t mated. The Unwanted rumors.”

“I guess so, and that was humiliating, but it was what happened after. I only got invited to whatever hunt would have me. I got hurt on one. Bear hunt with a bunch of hunters who had no business hunting a bear. I was first harrier. Bear got me. Pack left me where I fell. I dragged myself home. Never got to go out with anyone again. Said I was too dangerous. I couldn’t control the prey. I would go out alone and bring back the biggest prey I could manage solo, trying to win some respect. Then the pack would take my kills and eat it without me. Then they wouldn’t even take my kills. Dad told me to stop imposing myself on the pack, so I just limited myself to hunting for food for the three of us.”

I stopped talking, because the words ceased to be able to express the deep well of hurt.

He rested his hands on my hips, eyes stormy, his grip tight. “Even I know how cruel that is.”

I curled some hair behind my ear. “I don’t want this to turn into a fight over how… toxic… my SilverPaw situation was. I’m still a good harrier. And I want to leave the city, but I’m not dumb enough to bolt across an open field.”

He eyed me, gaze heavy. “Can I trust you to know when to get out from under the prey?”

He was talking about City Sickness. “You don’t need to worry, Sterling. I’m not going to become that wolf.”

“Please don’t lie to yourself and tell you’re fine. You are not fine. And that’s fine too.”

“Of course I’m not fine! I damn near got abducted! But that doesn’t mean I have City Sickness or that I’m about to dissolve into a jibbering pile of goo.”

He caressed my cheeks with his knuckles. “You can, you know. I don’t mind if you do.”

I did not want to be goo. “Well, I’m hungry, and I think I’ve earned a slice of cake.”

“Is there cake?”

“I’m going to make big eyes at Cye and whimper about needing cake.”

He smiled a few degrees. “Fair enough. I worry how you haven’t been eating. You’ve lost weight.”

“I’ve been eating.”

“You pick at your food. How much has Mint had to have your dresses adjusted from just a few weeks ago?”

I scowled. “Barely any, thanks. And you did agree we can’t just leave.”

He growled to himself. “I am worried you’re being a stubborn harrier who doesn’t know when to get out from under the prey.”

That might be true—I was a stubborn bitch about getting my prey, but so was he. “Says the ratter.”

I was in awe of my mate having been a ratter. I’d only ever caught one rat in my life to prove I could do it, and I never wanted to try it again. It hadn’t even tasted good. And I hadn’t been a pup with milk teeth and no claws and young enough to still be in that fluffy puppy stage who should have been barking at a dead vole. Sterling did not get to call me stubborn when he was from an entirely different sphere of hunter heaven (or hell, depending on how you wanted to look at it).

Sterling said, cooly, “I’m not hungry enough to hunt rat.”

“Bullshit. You’ve bitten up one Elder Alpha and declared war on a second one—you just haven’t informed him of it yet.”

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