Chapter 10: The Cabin

I didn't run.

I let my wolf out instead.

My coat tore at the seams.

My boots split.

I came up on four feet in the snow, silver and huge, and I put myself between Tiernan and the trees.

Then I howled.

It rolled up the slope and came back off the far side of the valley.

Up in the pines, something crashed away through the brush.

Two legs, not four.

Running.

I wanted to chase it so badly my whole body shook.

Behind me, Tiernan groaned.

The smoke from his shoulder was getting thicker.

I turned back.

The bolt had snapped when he fell.

The feathered end lay in the snow by the pool.

The head was still buried in him, and it was cooking him from the inside.

The rest of the party was half a mile down the valley.

The shooter was somewhere between us and them.

And the sky over the ridge had gone the dark yellow-grey of a storm coming in.

The cabin was closer.

Up past the last pool, he had said.

I took the collar of his coat in my teeth and pulled.

He was heavy, even for my wolf.

I dragged him uphill through the snow, step by step, with his boots leaving two long lines behind us.

The first flakes started coming down.

By the time I saw the cabin, I couldn't see the springs behind us anymore.

It was a hunters' cabin, one room of grey logs with a stone chimney.

The door wasn't locked.

I hauled him inside and let go.

Then I shifted back.

I was naked and shaking on the plank floor.

There was a wool blanket folded on the cot.

I wrapped it around myself and knelt beside him.

"Tiernan. Look at me."

His eyes opened.

They were bloodshot, the gold almost gone.

"Told you to run," he said.

"I don't take orders from you anymore."

That got half a smile out of him.

"Knife," he said. "Belt."