chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

W hen she let herself into the house on Motham Hill late that night, it felt so very still.

The grand interior gaped, empty and dark without Max by her side. She thought about him as she lay in the bed they’d shared this past week, staring at the ceiling.

Was he out on the mountain now, with other members of his pack?

Fully wolf?

What if he decided he liked it up there in the snow, with his thick silver pelt and his new family? What if he met a she-wolf as beautiful as Perdita and they formed a mateship bond.

Don’t be a fool, he loves you.

But he hasn’t said those words.

Over the next few days, she went aimlessly from room to room, looking at the files of notes, the books with Max’s scribbled handwriting in the margins.

She tried to collate some more of his notes, but her usual efficiency seemed to have deserted her. She was lonely and lovesick, and not at all her old chirpy self. She spent much of the time watching TV in the snug, wishing Max was there with her.

But there was one thing she did know: even if her time with Max had been short, during that time, maybe because of it, Charlie Sullivan had grown up.

One morning, when he’d been gone nearly a week, she went to the bathroom mirror and surveyed her face. Her dark eyes stared seriously back at her. She tucked a curl behind her ear, then had to smile as the recalcitrant thing bounced back around her cheek.

In their short time together, she’d felt loved, passionately, and she had to believe in that. In him returning to her.

Enough of this moping, Charlie Sullivan.

Falling for Max didn’t mean she had to be sad until he returned. Instead, she could take hold of her destiny , their destiny and, like Eloise, dance and sing and laugh and… damn it, go fulfil her dreams.

She went to the wardrobe and took out her party dress, the one that had gotten torn and tattered in her ordeal with the ferals. The one that she’d worn riding on Max’s back as he carried her home.

It needed to be dry-cleaned and the rips patched up.

She’d lost her high-heeled pumps somewhere in the Wastelands, along with Max’s shredded designer slacks and jacket. She smirked. That would cause a few ferals some amusement when they found them.

Well, she would go out and buy some new shiny shoes, she decided. And get her dress fixed up.

With that thought, she went to her purse and took out the flyer about the Winter Solstice Rut. She smoothed it out on the kitchen table and made herself a cup of tea, then sat down and read it through in detail.

It wasn’t cheap. The elite package would cost her a whole week’s wages.

She was taking a huge risk here. She hadn’t even asked Max if he was willing to be her partner in the rut. She was going on a powerful hunch, but she had no proof it would pay off.

What if he wasn’t home by next weekend?

She would be standing alone at a rut in her best party dress and shoes. In the middle of freakin’ winter.

But somehow, she had no idea why, she trusted that he would be there.

She would send him a message, telling him to meet her on the edge of the Motham Woods.

At a certain time.

And then she’d leave the rest to fate.

She got out her credit card, sat down with her laptop and went to the website.

And then she scrolled straight to the premier package.

There were so many choices, her eyes nearly fell out of her head. So many different combinations of primal chases. One partner, two… three. Orgies.

As for kinks and fetishes… Her eyes widened as she read through the extensive list. She had a lot to learn still. Sure, bondage, whips, yeah, she knew all the usual ones, but vore? Hmmm, she’d have to look that one up.

Finally, as she skimmed through the list, she saw the option “Primal Chase”, and ticked it.

And when she got to partner numbers and preferences, she ticked the box that said, “Bringing my own.”

It wasn’t so painful this time.

And at least he’d had the good sense to remove his clothes first. So, no shredded garments either. Max had also had some warning of what was going to happen, having been led to a special room by Perdita and given a rather bitter concoction to drink that she said would ease the process.

He’d felt the nausea, the tingling in his limbs, and got down on all fours on the stone floor in readiness. But the discomfort as his human limbs slid into their wolf counterparts was not so intense this time, the headache not nearly as gripping as his snout lengthened and his ears twitched into place. It was as though his body, having done it once before, had a muscle memory of how it worked.

When he’d prowled around the cave a couple of times and got used to being wolf once more, he nosed aside the curtain and padded out.

Outside, his two cousins waited: Perdita’s sons, Calvin and Wade. They had been big men with wide facial features and high cheekbones when he’d met them half an hour earlier. And while they were clearly men of few words, he’d felt immediately at ease in their presence.

But now they were in their wolf form.

Their pelts, like his, gleamed silver in the light shed from the sconces, and their eyes glowed red as they made their way to the mouth of the cave.

Perdita, also wolfen now, spoke to him in a bark that formed words in his head, telling him she had to go inside to watch the screens for ogre activity.

It seemed this place was both an army camp and a home.

“Are you ready?” Calvin spoke. Or did he bark? Max’s ears twitched to the sound, but he understood, and he guessed that was all that mattered.

“We’ll take the mountain path. Hunt for prey on our way.”

Max didn’t flinch. Suddenly it seemed the most natural thing in the world to hunt and kill his own food. His mind became calm, focused only on his wolf instincts. His human worries receded, replaced by the acuity of his five senses and a simplicity that spelled out the natural order of things.

For several days and nights he tracked behind the other two wolves, along the narrow mountain paths, watching the movement of their shaggy flanks in the moonlight, the play of muscle evident under their thick fur. The cold did not affect him, the bitter wind barely ruffling his thick pelt. Often they slept in the day, moving mostly during the night hours.

Max did not know time, but he had no sense of fatigue, and he could see by the position of the moon in the sky that they had been tracking for a while now, watching it grow bigger each night.

One time, as they reached a particularly high peak the other two wolves stopped, snouts raised, and sniffed the air, their bright eyes scanning the mountains. Max’s nostrils twitched and he picked up an acrid foul smell.

“Ogres, to the north,” Wade communicated to him. “Feasting on a wild boar carcass.”

Max realized that he could differentiate between the dead animal, the live ogres, and the scent of the fire they were cooking it on. His gaze detected very little in the bleak landscape, the merest whisp of smoke maybe, but his sense of smell told him the ogres were a fair distance away.

After a moment, the other wolves shrugged their huge shoulders and kept going. Clearly, the danger from ogres was not a major concern.

Soon they were winding down the steep mountainside, through the thick snow. Max’s limbs carried him with ease, his paws sensing boulders and fallen trees under the snow, jumping deftly over the rocky outcrops.

Finally, they entered a deep ravine, fir trees lined up like an army on either side. At the bottom was a running stream, its waters crystal clear, the light of the moon turning it to molten silver.

They followed it until they reached the other side. Climbing up, they came to a gully with an opening.

Finally, Max followed the other two wolves into a cave.

“This is the Felcin pack’s sacred burial cave,” Calvin explained.

Inside, a thousand prisms of light shone from the rocks, and stalactites glittered from the domed ceiling. Max wondered at the beauty of it, and how it came to be; he knew that even his sharp wolf eyesight could not make light from nothing.

“Where is the light coming from?” he asked, gazing around the cave.

“Fireflies,” Wade explained. Max looked harder and realized the ceiling was actually covered in the tiny creatures.

“Are they always here?” he thought-beamed incredulously.

“No. They fly in when they sense us approaching. Fireflies are spirit creatures to our wolf. They light up our sacred burial sites and often lead ogres away from us, blinding them by flying in swarms.”

Max shook his shaggy head in awe.

As they prowled through the cave complex, he noticed rock formations with strange markings on them, written in a language he did not comprehend. Were these werewolf graves?

Finally, Calvin led him to a headstone that looked grander, more recent than the rest, and they sank down on their flanks in front of it.

“Your father, Alec, is buried here,” Calvin communicated to him. Both his cousins prostrated themselves in front of the grave, muzzle on paws, eyes closed.

Max followed their lead, lowering his muzzle, and sank onto his huge front paws as the twinkling light of a thousand fireflies arched above his head.

Here, he paid homage to his father.

And to the wild wolf embedded in his own soul.