The Cold Breakfast Bride novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Run

It hurt for exactly as long as it always had.

Then it didn't.

I came up on four feet on the cold gravel, and the whole world came in through my nose at once.

Woodsmoke.

Elk stew.

Pine pitch.

Four hundred wolves, and every one of them I'd fed.

I shook myself out of the last of my cook's jacket.

My fur was the color of my braid, honey and darker honey.

I hadn't seen it since July.

A sound went up from the long tables.

Not a howl.

A cheer, from the people still on two legs.

The waitress had two fingers in her mouth, whistling.

Hatty was crying in the doorway with a pie server in her hand.

At the edge of the trees, a huge sandy wolf with a white scar across one foreleg stood waiting.

Ruthie was sitting on his back in her purple raincoat, both fists buried in his ruff.

"Jess!" she screamed. "Jess is a wolf! Jess is a wolf, everybody!"

Abel looked at me with gold eyes.

He didn't come to me.

He waited.

I went.

We ran.

The Wilder woods went up the mountain in black and silver.

The moon was so bright it threw shadows under the pines.

Forty wolves ran ahead of us and around us, gray and red and brown, and the hill packs came behind.

I didn't run fast.

The doctor had said so, and my wolf had heard her.

She ran low and easy with something small and warm curled inside her, and she didn't care about fast.

She'd been shut in a dark room for two months.

She wanted every smell on the mountain.

Ruthie bounced on Abel's back, screaming with joy every time he jumped a log.

"Faster, Daddy! Faster!"

He went exactly as fast as I did.

Every few strides he turned his big head to look at me.

At the top of the ridge, above the new log house from the den-raising, the pack stopped.

The whole valley lay below us.

The lake.

Iron Ridge's lodge, lit up gold on the shore.

And up the pass, small and pink and steady, the neon coffee cup over Hatty's.

Abel lifted his head and howled.

The Wilder pack answered.

I put my head back and howled with them, for the first time in my life with a pack that wasn't his.

Somewhere below, a few voices from Iron Ridge's shore answered too.

← Chapter 19 · All chapters · Chapter 21 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend