When circumstances demanded stealth, my wolf and I could run silently. This time, we chose to do so, giving our prey no warning of our approach.
So we heard Harry before he knew we were coming. Swiveled our ears to catch the scratch of metal on stone even as we leapt out of the trees with murder on our shared mind.
The overhanging cliff cast the petroglyph into deep shadows. For half a second, all I saw was darkness.
Which is why I didn’t realize what I was interrupting until my nose was a hair’s breadth away from Val’s naked backbone.
But then I backpedaled so rapidly I knocked Claw onto his butt. The scratch of metal against rock wasn’t Harry vandalizing the petroglyph. Instead, a zipper or button was rubbing against the ledge beneath them as Harry and Val made out.
THE UNDERTOW OF CLAW regaining his humanity sucked me under, but I fought for freedom. Big brothers had a tendency to get violent after catching their sister in deshabille.
And was he only a big brother? The kiss he and Val had shared haunted me. The knowledge that my wolf would soon become Val’s alter-ego put into question our own romantic spark....
Only, Claw apparently shared none of my confusion. By the time I opened my eyes, pebbles biting into my naked knees, he was laughing. I could barely understand his words between the chortles, but they gradually resolved into: “This explains a lot.”
Val and Harry were standing now, their clothes in disarray but their faces glowing. “See, I told you so,” Val said, smacking Harry across his naked pectorals. “He’s not mad.”
“You’re both adults,” Claw started. But then he tensed, turned, drew all of our gazes to the space between the petroglyph and the cliff...and to the person sliding through that gap.
Sam. My vision was blurry without my glasses, but the newcomer’s interest was apparent as he looked us over. Claw and I were showing off full frontal nudity, and if I recalled correctly half of Val’s chest was also exposed to view.
Sure enough, Sam raised one eyebrow, the scent of interest darkening. “Nobody told me I was missing out on an orgy,” he muttered. Then, louder and over his shoulder: “Found them.”
So Sam wasn’t going to be our only audience? Sure enough, a second body sliding out of the crack materialized into Patricia.
“Dr. Hart? What’s going on?” As if the use of my formal name wasn’t enough, bitter confusion wafted off her person. Patricia had looked up to me as a mentor, and I’d let her down.
“It’s complicated,” I started.
“Then you can explain it later.” Sam’s scent tightened into minty purpose. “Curfew time, kiddies. There are two spare bunkhouses and I don’t care who sleeps in which of them. I just need you to vacate this rock.”
Sure enough, the sun was setting while the ever-present heartbeat of drums was moving closer. Short of shifting lupine in front of two unsuspecting humans, we’d be filing past the entire party buck naked. Soon, Patricia wouldn’t be the only one of my students to be mortified.
Which might be why my voice grew curter than I meant it to be when I set my TA on the task of damage control. “Patricia, gather the students and Benjie. I’ll join you in one of the bunkhouses to keep an eye on them.”
“You don’t trust me to chaperone?” Her tone was hurt, my nakedness forgotten. I guess she’d expected me to want to snuggle with my supposed boyfriend.
I started to soothe her, but Sam spoke over me. “Clock’s ticking....”
Without another word, Patricia turned to retrace her footsteps, leaving the rest of us to endure our naked walk of shame.
AT SOME POINT, THE ever-present drumming ceased to be music and turned into the relentless lap of waves against a boat hull. Brushing my teeth, my hand moved in rhythm. Walking back to my bunkbed, it was impossible to speed my steps past the cadence of the deep, steady thrum.
“Lights out in five minutes,” I told all and sundry, my words syncopated like poetry. Adena cawed agreement from her perch on the end of my bed.
“Aw, Dr. Olivia....” Jacob drummed out his complaint against the headboard. His backup pencils whacked the metal out of sync with the distant music. It was all I could do not to force an end to the drumming the same way Sam had done.
“It’s not even dark outside,” Emily said, backing him up. She was right. And that reminded me—
The full moon is coming. No wonder my head ached, while my wolf trembled inside me. Over the course of three months, my animal half had settled enough that lunar cycle didn’t entirely upend my stability...but it still had a destabilizing impact on our shared life.
And once again, I was more curt than I meant to be. “Now,” I countered, sliding into the bunk across from Jacob’s while catching Patricia’s confusion out of the corner of one eye.
She didn’t understand why I’d suddenly turned into a domineering dictator. But she backed me up anyway. “You heard Dr. Hart. Sweet dreams, everyone.”
Unfortunately, the lights flicking out only enhanced the rhythmic drumming. Every thud of hand against stretched animal hide roiled my stomach, only the lulls between enabling me to breathe.
In my belly, my wolf whined in confusion. Our tendrils of pack bond danced in time to the music, wrapping her up like a cocooning caterpillar. Despite the light of the moon pouring through the window, the smothering weight dragged her to sleep.
I was quick to follow. Not that dreams gave me respite. Color, light, and sound swirled in senseless cacophony. I was half-relieved to be woken by a damp lupine nose pressing into my dangling hand.
The drumming had ceased, but a wolf in the student bunkhouse was equally problematic. “Go away,” I ordered, not bothering to open my eyes.
The soft padding of retreating footsteps lulled me back to slumber. This time, my sleep was restorative rather than a mere escape from agony. When I woke, however, morning clarity slapped me with the truth.
“That wasn’t Claw or Harry.” The scent, the weight of falling paws—both were lighter than either of my familiar companions.
I sat up so fast I banged my head on the bunk above me. Adena squawked. Noah grumbled before restarting his buzz-saw snore.
Reaching for my glasses, I begged a little assistance from my wolf to supplement the pre-dawn glow oozing in the window. The top bunks were full—Benjie slept with his leg sprawled over the edge while Emily snuggled deep under her covers along the third wall.
Patricia was also present and accounted for. But the bed directly across from mine—Jacob’s—was empty.
“Maybe he needed to pee,” I lied to myself as I crossed the small space separating the two bunk beds. The scent of wolf was so strong here that I didn’t need any assistance from my animal half to discern it. My alter-ego did, however, note something I had not.
An unusual shape stuck out from beneath the pillow. Small and irregular, yet strangely familiar.
I bent down, recognizing soapstone. Pushed back the pillow and saw the unmistakable silhouette of a carved wolf.
Chapter 21
My first impulse was to shift and find Jacob. My student. My responsibility.
Our pack, my wolf answered, for once refusing to take the bait and claim our shared skin. Group hunt.
She must have backed up her demand with some intangible bond-tugging, because a whisper of sound emerged from the doorway about the time I ceased fighting our internal battle. “What’s wrong?” Claw stood just outside the bunkhouse wearing pants but nothing else. Despite the compulsion to find Jacob before something terrible happened, I lost one second to enjoying the view.
Which meant my wolf answered before I did, broadcasting raw memory. Flashes of scent, sound, and image. Pounding drums. A wolf statue. Jacob Changed and gone.
“He can’t have much of a head start. We’ll find him together.” The last word was barely out before Claw shivered down four-legged. A tug in my belly suggested that he’d seized his pack bonds and yanked the others out of sleep.
I tried to be angry but relief was instan
taneous. My wolf was right. We were stronger together.
“Let’s go,” I murmured, swiping the wolf statue off Jacob’s bed...then nearly dropping it when it burned hot against my fingers. This was a charged item, much stronger than the one the prehistoric shaman had created for the cave girl. How had something so powerful come into Jacob’s possession?
He made it himself, I guessed. Harry hadn’t arrived yet, so I wasted a moment padding back to my bed to check my pants pockets. As expected, both sides were empty. Jacob must have overheard me spilling my guts to Benjie two nights earlier while I assumed everyone else was sleeping. He’d swiped my rock then used the petroglyph to charge it....
“Are you ready?” Harry’s words broke through my puzzle-solving. Unlike Claw, he hadn’t thought to lower his voice, prompting Patricia to murmur a sleepy question.
It was time to stop sleuthing and start fixing Jacob’s life-changing mistake.
“Yes,” I told Harry. Then, soothing my teaching assistant: “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
I waited long enough to make sure Patricia’s breathing eased back into slumber. Then I grabbed my glasses and padded to the door.
By now, the entire pack had assembled on the small porch of the bunkhouse. Adena perched on the railing, watching Harry work his way through a gradual metamorphosis. Val knelt beside her brother, fitting a backpack atop his fur.
“Is there room for two small items?” I murmured. At her nod, I unzipped the top and dropped in the wolf statue along with my glasses.
The weight of the statue shifted the straps across Claw’s shoulders. He shivered and turned to meet my gaze while my wolf whined a wordless protest.
They knew what a charged statue could be used for.
We might need it, I told both of them, my response resembling an apology.
Without answering, Claw leapt off the porch and headed into the forest. Val stood two-legged, staring after him with eyes full of longing.
Her yearning, I finally understood, had nothing to do with romantic interest in her brother. She was being left behind just like she’d been as a child.
For the first time, I understood why she wanted to become a wolf.
JACOB HAD RUN SOUTH, the same way I’d led Claw the previous evening. Toward the wilds of Yellowstone—at least my student wouldn’t get himself shot or run over by people mistaking him for a wild wolf.
Right now, he is a wild wolf, Claw warned, intuiting Jacob’s path and cutting off a dogleg that led to the entrance of a vole’s burrow. I shivered, bloody flashbacks from the previous winter reminding me what could happen if a newly Changed shifter lost his human mind.
There was no evidence that his shift had broken Jacob however. And we had more tangible troubles at the moment, like the snow that started falling as we achieved higher elevations. The initial flurries landed jewel-like on the backs of the wolves in front of me, but soon fat flakes clumped so close together that they filled in Claw’s footprints before I reached the spot where he’d recently been.
Somehow, Claw managed to track Jacob for several minutes after the student’s trail was covered. But then he stopped, snorting his frustration as we gathered in a huffing, heaving sea of hot fur and bright eyes.
Spread out, Claw ordered. We’ll smell urine, see kills. Use the pack bond to report in.
I must not have been the only one whose head Claw could speak inside because Harry instantly arrowed off to scramble up a nearby scree slope. Reluctantly, I drew upon my own tendrils of connection, loping away from the others until I lost them to the snowflakes.
As we ran, the tethers between us strengthened. I knew the instant Harry scraped his pad on a sharp rock. I caught a glimpse through Claw’s eyes as he paused in wonder at a rock-ledge overlook.
This time, the growing tethers didn’t strangle me. Instead, they slid around me, knotting into loops and weaves of patterns.
I was tangling myself in the pack. It felt good. It felt right...
...It was antithetical to the entire purpose of this trip.
Go back. Claw’s voice in my head was as loud as if he’d stood beside me. We’ve got this.
For a moment I wavered. Selfishness told me to take this chance and bow out gracefully. But...
...Jacob was my student. I couldn’t abandon him.
I’m coming, I countered as the sun moved invisibly above dense snow clouds.
The air felt colder than it had a moment earlier. Pack was inspiring, but also dangerous.
After today, would it be possible for me to divorce my wolf?
THE STORM HAD CLEARED but the sun was drifting toward the horizon when Adena circled back around to join us. Or at least I thought that was Adena. What other raven would hover above me croaking imprecations until she knocked my wolf out of her ground-eating stride?
Ours, my wolf confirmed, cocking her head to peer upward. Over the last few hours, the call of the moon had made it harder and harder for me to fight against lupine pack mentality. Now, however, Adena’s behavior acted like a shot of espresso wakening my muddled human brain.
The raven was dancing on wind currents, dipping and barreling. Sun glinted on her feathers as she angled one wing down so far she nearly fell into a snow drift. Then she straightened, flapped higher, and arrowed straight over a tree line and into the valley below.
Jacob. I knew Adena was leading us toward our lost student the same way I’d known to turn left instead of right when our pack came to a splitting of the ways an hour earlier. At the time, Claw had hesitated, cocked his head, and peered at me in question. But he’d trusted me. When I nodded confirmation, we’d spread back out, following the trajectory I somehow knew in my gut was right.
Now, I didn’t wait for Claw to draw us back in for a huddle. Instead, I sent an arrow of direction down the pack bonds then sprinted after Adena. Over a rise, through thick trees...then I plummeted off a cliff as snow disappeared from beneath my paws.
Three feet to tarmac. Cars, people, telescopes. The crowd faced away from me, but my less-than-graceful entrance alerted the closest couple to my existence.
“Wolf!” the woman shouted. A wave of turning bodies. Eyes struck me like poison from a dart gun.
I tensed, expecting terror-stricken reactions. Were we in the park now? Would I be dodging bullets?
“It’s beautiful.” The second voice was edged with wonder. A symphony of clicks emanated from cameras instead of guns.
Then I lost track of their existence as a rash of ravens—a murder of ravens?—rose from the valley toward which I’d been heading. That many birds would only band together around a carcass. Jacob was bound to be hungry....
Unfortunately, carcasses didn’t just sit around in the wilderness waiting for Changed wolves to order takeout. Instead, these tourists were crowded along the nearest roadway to watch whatever had made the kill.
A grizzly, maybe. Or—worse—a wild wolf pack.
The leading cause of death for wolves in Yellowstone is other wolves. The remembered fact came into my mind unbidden. Hovering beneath it, the raw reality—Jacob wouldn’t stand a chance when faced with a pack of wolves protecting their food and turf.
My tail brushed the leg of a toddler as I sprinted toward the cloud of ravens. “Timmy!” called his anguished mother. The harsh scent of urine erupted as the boy’s bladder lost control.
I didn’t waste time to contrition however. The boy should be terrified to touch me. After all, I was a wolf with murder on my mind.
Chapter 22
I recognized Jacob, not by sight or scent but by his terrified drumming. He lay on his back, sides heaving and neck cocked in submission. But his hind leg kicked at the air in grim imitation of a belly-rubbed canine’s rapturous twitch.
Why grim? Because the snow around him was dark with blood while a black-furred wolf growled warning. Jacob’s comeuppance wasn’t over. If I wasn’t much mistaken, it had only just begun.
That’s all I saw before I dove toward my student. Claw was
fast approaching, slowed only by the necessity of hiding from tourists who couldn’t see a wolf wearing a backpack. Pack bonds informed me that Harry was also nearby
I should have waited for backup. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Jacob was injured, and he was our pack mate.
I was thirty feet from the black wolf when a gray materialized before me. She must have been lying in a dip, perhaps resting after gorging on the dead elk I’d seen from the roadway. Or maybe she’d been gnawing on Jacob and decided to take a breather. Whatever the reason, she was fresh and ready and in my face.
My wolf feinted sideways, but the gray was faster. Despite being smaller than I was, her agility was superior. Her teeth grazed my shoulder. A sparkle of blood hit the snow before I even felt the pain.
Three more at nine o’clock. Claw’s voice in my head was entirely human, but his body was wolf as it slammed into the gray and continued on past me.
I leapt over the winded female and took up a spot at Claw’s shoulder while ravens cawed cacophony. The three new wolves facing us were younger, smaller. One hesitated while two thrust forward like twin prongs of a fork. On our opposite flank, the gray scrambled back to her feet.
Then Jacob’s yelp rose above the swirling symphony. I fought the urge to turn to face him. Listened to Claw’s game plan instead.
Distract them. Claw pivoted away. I’ll get Jacob.
Distract them? I didn’t know where to start, but my wolf was willing. She goaded the female with a curled-lip snarl then ran to meet the youngsters even as the gray’s breath heated the tip of our tail.
Harry, meanwhile, was sending ideas down the pack tether. That one was ballsy. Would it be effective?
Now, Harry, my wolf ordered, trying and failing to speed up our footsteps.
Moon Dancer Page 10
