Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
Raising my arm, I clenched my teeth at where the lynx had shredded my flesh. It had knitted together. Not as quickly or as neatly as the new scar on my side, but it seemed as if the wound was moons old, not just days.
Narrowing my eyes, I touched the jagged healing.
No heat. No fevers. No redness.
How?
Looking up, I caught Salak’s yellow calculation. The giant wolf licked his muzzle, watching me touch my mostly healed wounds. One I remembered and one I didn’t. He shook his head again with a snort.
I didn’t know why he seemed so wary or why the pack sat far away, but gratefulness poured through me that they’d come for me. They’d somehow nursed me through my fevers and kept me alive for a second time.
More gratefulness swelled, and life-returning warmth poured into my limbs. Strength flowed, and I stretched creaking, no longer cold bones, before standing on dusty feet.
I didn’t sway. Didn’t wobble. I felt as healthy as I had the morning I’d outrun Salak.
How long ago was that?
Salak stood too, his eyes never leaving mine.
I didn’t move, reading his body language that remained threatening. “It’s okay, Salak. I don’t know what happened while I was asleep, but...I’m awake now.”
One of the pups trotted forward, breaking ranks from the others.
A female growled for it to return, but the pup ignored her, bumbling up to my foot where it sniffed my leg. Its tiny pink tongue ran over my knee just before it sat heavily on its rump and placed its two front paws on my thigh.
It yipped with a happy tongue lolling out.
The other pups suddenly shot forward, bumping into my legs, snapping at each other for prime position to touch me.
I reached down and scratched the squirming infants. A smile broke my lips, stretching cheeks and feeling odd. Unfamiliar—almost as if wherever I’d been in my fevers, my body had forgotten how to live, laugh, and grin.
I chuckled as the tiny wolflings sniffed and licked me. One tried to chew my toe. I laughed louder, looking up at Salak, hoping he approved.
His yellow eyes narrowed on mine, and a flash of fear tensed his furry forehead. But then it was gone with a heavy wolfish sigh, and he padded forward like he’d always done. Full of kinship and authority.
Snapping good-naturedly at the pups, he waited until they’d scattered before pushing his wet nose above my heart and inhaling deep. The organ that hid behind ribs and muscle thudded and pumped blood, reacting to Salak’s closeness and his sharp glinting teeth.
After a long moment, he huffed, licked me, then shook his great bulk. Padding toward the edge of the cave, he threw himself against the rock wall and stretched out with a groan. Whatever tension existed in the pack suddenly dispersed, and the wolves all came forward. Tails wagging, spiral horns glistening, their snuffles of welcome thawing the final shards of ice in my blood until they all left me to pile around the alpha and yawn away their stress.
I sighed with relief as my bones shed the last glitter of frost, and my body made itself known with urges. Along with my ravenous thirst, I was hungry. Starving. I needed to eat so I could gather the rest of my strength.
“I’ll return,” I murmured at Salak as the giant alpha flipped onto his back, allowing the pups to clamber all over him. The females kept a close eye on their wolflings, all while I slipped from the cave and leapt down the small ledge to the grass below.
My balance was back.
My power intact.
Another wave of thankfulness came; I’d survived.
I never wanted to be that weak or ill again. I didn’t know how my body had fought the fevers, but I was healed and desperate to live.
Stretching again, listening to my shoulders pop and ligaments crack, I gave myself over to the night.
The sounds of crickets and night birds surrounded me, along with the stealthy paws of hunters, and the gentle rustle of roosting feathers.
I’d missed this.
Missed this feeling of oneness and connection to the wilderness.
Inhaling deeply, I breathed in the night sky.
The dense scent of smoke and soot poured into my lungs.
Memories slammed into me.
I doubled over with pain and panic.
The girl.
The girl with white hair.
The two men.
The fury that’d poured out of me as I’d pummelled the man trying to keep me away from her and flew to her side in a storm of shadows.
Shadows that only seemed to arrive with temper and rage.
He’d stabbed me.
My hand shot to the healed hole in my side. The hole I couldn’t remember receiving.
A spear.
The man who’d hurt the girl had thrown a spear at me.
I’d lost myself after that.
Shadows had thickened and pinned him to the ground.
An extension of myself.
A billow of blackness.
I was going to kill him.