Chapter 12: The Cliff Path

Ninety wolves turned to see what their Alpha was looking at.

It was me.

Nobody said a word. The sea washed on the quay steps.

Jago's aunt, beside me, took a slow step to the side, out of his line.

He came back through the pack. They parted for him without being asked.

He stopped in front of me. His eyes had gone gold at the edges, the way a wolf's do when it's close.

"Walk with me," he said.

It wasn't an order. His voice wasn't steady enough for that.

"Go on, my love," said his aunt. "We'll run without him."

We went up the cliff path behind the cellars.

It was a narrow path through gorse, yellow even at night, smelling of coconut.

Below us the pack poured off the quay and up the far side of the cove, half of them already shifting, fur and moonlight.

Their howls went up behind us.

Jago didn't speak until we reached the bench at the top, where the path turned along the cliff.

He didn't sit. He stood with his hands in his pockets and looked at the sea.

"I had a mate," he said. "Before."

"I guessed."

"Nine years ago. Winter. A boat went out from the next cove and didn't come back on time. She took ours to look for it."

He was quiet a while.

"She found it. Brought two of them home. Then went back for the third."

The wind moved the gorse.

"That was the last proper boat this cove had," he said. "I sold the rest. Couldn't look at them."

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't think I'd smell it again. Not in this life. I'd made my peace."

He turned round and looked at me.

"And then a woman in a biscuit tin drives down my hill."

I sat on the bench because my knees told me to.

"I'm still mated," I said. "On paper. Twenty years."

"I know."

"Do you know why I left?"

"Porridge."

"Before the porridge."

So I told him what the old Luna told me.

Released, she'd called it. The thread cut at my end.

And the rest of it. The one about a second chance within the year.

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