Chapter 17: Honey Gold

By the next evening the gold had gone from my nails, and I was almost sure I had dreamed it.

Torin drove me back to the cottage with Joss in the back seat.

Neither of them said a word about my hands.

Torin had seen them in the dark of his bedroom, and he must have told Joss.

I had caught them looking at my fingers all day.

"I'm not shifting in the kitchen," I said.

"Nobody asked you to," Joss said.

"You asked it with your eyebrows."

"My eyebrows are free to hope."

Behind the cottage, my mother's old pasture ran down toward the creek in long yellow grass.

The sun was low behind the ridge. The air smelled of wet leaves and woodsmoke.

Torin stopped at the fence and didn't open the gate.

"I don't know how to do this," he said.

"Do what?"

"Teach you. My wolf came to me at fifteen. It hurt and I screamed, and my father held me down."

"Mine is in you," I said.

"Yes."

"So I don't need a teacher. I need it to know I'm here."

He looked at me.

"Take your hand," I said, and held mine out.

He gave me his.

It was warm and hard, and the callus at the base of his thumb was familiar already.

I walked us through the gate and out into the grass, until the fence was far behind us.

Joss stayed on the porch with his arms folded.

"Now what?" Torin said.

"Now shut up and let me talk to her."

I closed my eyes and put my palm flat on his chest.

For four years, that had meant: be quiet.

Tonight I meant something else.

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