The Independence My Alpha Regretted novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Run

I ran until the frost stopped hurting my feet.

A wolf's world has no sentences in it.

There was cold, and there was the ridge, and there was the long climb up the rocks while my heart pounded.

Every smell had a color.

Deer had crossed here at midnight, and a fox an hour after, and under it all ran the sharp green smell of the creek.

My wolf knew exactly what she carried.

She ran lower and slower than she wanted to, and she never once jumped a log.

At the top of the ridge I stood panting with my breath streaming.

The sky behind the pines had gone the color of a peach.

Something moved on the slope below me.

It was black, and it was thin, and it had stopped at the edge of the trees and gone absolutely still.

He knew me before I knew him.

The bond went across the quiet.

His wolf did not come forward.

It stood in the shadow of a fir with its head lowered and its ears flat, waiting to be told.

I looked at him for a long time.

I remembered what I had said on the bridge.

Not unless I reach first.

I went down the slope slowly, with my claws in the needles.

He did not move.

He didn't move when I came within a body-length, or when I came within a stride.

His breath came out in a shaking cloud.

I could smell what he was made of: woodsmoke from the stove at the feed store, cedar from my woodpile, and under it the sour edge of a long, long hunger.

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