The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 11 of 40

Chapter 11: The Spring

Osric rode out of the square without another word.

His twelve carts rattled after him, empty.

At the bend in the road, I saw his captain tear the loaf in half and hand the other half to the rider beside him.

Then they were gone, and the square was full of people looking at each other.

"First snow," the sergeant said. "Six weeks. Maybe seven."

"Then we've got six weeks," I said.

"To do what?"

I didn't have an answer yet.

Nobody said much at supper.

Corvin didn't eat.

He sat at the head of the table and turned his cup around and around, and after a while he got up and left.

I found Agnes scrubbing the big pot like it owed her money.

"Where does he go?" I asked. "When he's like this."

"Up the ridge." She didn't look up. "He runs. He's done it since he was nine."

I went up the ridge at dusk.

I hadn't shifted in three years.

Osric said a Luna on four legs was unseemly. So I hadn't. Not once. Not even alone.

At the top of the ridge, behind a rock, I pulled my dress over my head.

I stood in the cold air in nothing at all.

For a second I was afraid I'd forgotten how.

Then I let go.

It came up through me. Bones folding. Skin prickling into fur. The world going sharp with smells.

I stood on four russet legs in the heather and shook myself hard.

The wind off the pass was full of everything. Pine. Snow on the high peaks. Deer somewhere below. Woodsmoke from the keep.

I ran.

I ran until my lungs burned and the ground blurred.

Over the ridge, down through the pines, up the other side, and I didn't stop for anything.

Somewhere in the trees, something black ran beside me.

He didn't come close.

He just ran, a big black wolf with a pale scar down his muzzle, matching my pace on the other side of a stream.

When I stopped at last, panting, he stopped too.

We looked at each other across the water.

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