Chapter 7: First Run

The first thing I understood about being a wolf was that the ground had a smell.

Not one smell.

A hundred, all separate, and I could read every one.

Pine sap and old rain.

A vole under the roots of a fir.

Rowan's boots, still wet from the creek, going the other way.

I ran up through the lavender and into the trees and did not stop.

My legs were long and quick and exactly as strong as they had always wanted to be.

I jumped a fallen log without thinking about it.

I took a switchback at full speed and did not slip.

Behind me something crashed through the brush, and a second wolf drew level with me, brown and black and grinning.

Rowan.

She had dropped her satchel in the lavender, kicked off her boots, and shifted in the time it took me to run twenty yards.

She bumped her shoulder into mine, hard.

It was the most joyful thing anyone had ever done to me.

I bumped her back.

We ran together for a long time.

We cut across the north meadow where the grass was white with frost, and the frost cracked under our paws.

We splashed through the upper creek, and the water was so cold that it hurt, and I loved it.

I loved that it hurt.

It meant something was on the other end of the feeling.

When the meadow ended we climbed a granite ledge and stopped at the top, panting.

The valley lay below us in the new sun.

I could see the whole pack territory.

The Gathering Hall and the packhouse, a thin line of smoke from the kitchen chimney, and the creek where I had dropped the silver.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Twin Was Meant to Die at Sixteen, So They Spent Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.