Chapter 18: After the Gold

"Sit," Arlo said.

The great white wolf sat.

She did not choose to.

I saw her legs fold under her, and her ribs heave, and her lips draw back from her teeth in a snarl that went nowhere.

Her eyes rolled toward my son.

"Down," said the gold voice, patient and absolute.

She went down on the carpet with her chin between her paws.

Then the shape of her broke apart.

Fur drew back, and bone slid, and a woman lay on the ripped carpet of my suite, naked and shaking, with her pale hair stuck to her face.

She tried to push herself up.

Her arms would not take the weight.

"He's four," Cora whispered. "He's four years old."

"Yes," I said.

I had shifted back without knowing it.

I was on my knees by the dresser, bare and bruised, with my hand pressed to my ribs.

"You went for a four-year-old," I said. "In his bed."

She had no answer.

Torin got up from the floor, human and bloody, and walked across the room to the bed.

He stopped at the edge of it.

"Arlo," he said quietly. "It's Dad."

The gold in my son's eyes flickered.

I watched the weight in the room go out of him a little at a time, and the lamp came back on by itself.

He swayed.

I was there to catch him.

He weighed nothing, all pajamas and warm limbs, and his heart was racing under my hand.

"Mom," he said, in his own small voice. "My head is loud."

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