Marked By Tide

Chapter 2 - The Finding Part 1

Cassian's POV

Surge stops running.

It is his body. I am in the back of it, the way I always am when the four legs are out. He has the wheel and I have the view — through his eyes, sharper than mine; through his ears, finer than mine; through his nose, an order of magnitude richer than the one I get when I am wearing my own face. The trees are taller from down here. The wet leaves under his paws smell of three different kinds of mushroom and a fox that came through six hours ago. I am along for the ride, and Surge has been *loving* it the way he always does — running flat-out and chattering at me about every scent we cross.

He stops mid-stride and goes silent.

That is the first wrong thing. Surge does not go silent. Surge *narrates*. He has narrated every patrol of my adult life, and the silence is loud enough that it puts me upright in the back seat of my own head.

*Surge*, I say. *What*.

He doesn't answer. He is *listening*.

Behind us Reef has hit his brakes a half-second after Surge did, which means Soren is doing the same thing I am doing — sitting in the back seat of his own wolf and asking *what*. We have been running together since we were ten. Our wolves read each other before we read them. Surge's hackles are up. Reef's ears are flat. Through the twin bond I can feel that Soren has gone tense in the same way I have gone tense, and we are both waiting on our wolves.

*Surge*, I say again. *Talk to me*.

*Something*, he says, finally. Just that. The single word. Surge does not give me one-word answers. The *something* is louder, in his quiet, than any of his normal noise would be.

*Where*.

*East-southeast. A quarter-mile.*

*What kind of something*.

A pause. Then, in a voice I have never heard him use before — a voice that is not playful, not bright, but absolutely *still* — Surge says: *Cassian. Take the body. I am going to give you the body. You need to talk to your brother.*

I have shared bones with Surge for nineteen years and he has never *offered* me the body like this. We trade off when we shift. He drives on four legs. I drive on two. He has never once said *take the body* the way he just said it, like he was the one choosing to relinquish the wheel, and the wrongness of it puts a cold thing in my chest that I do not have time to name.

*Why*.

*Because what is east-southeast is yours and I am not equipped to handle it. I will help. But you need to drive.*

*Surge — *

*Take the body, Cassian. Now.*

I take the body.

The shift comes up through me fast — too fast, the kind of shift Soren has been telling me to slow down on since we were thirteen — and I land on two feet in human form with my balance wrong and my breath ragged and my brother already shifting back behind me, because he saw what I just did and knows me well enough to know that if my wolf is giving me the body, his wolf is giving him the body too.

Surge slides into the back seat. He goes quietly. He does not protest the way he usually does when he leaves the fur. He is *focused* on something I cannot see, and the focus has shut down most of his usual chatter, and the quiet of him is itself information.

*Stay with me*, I tell him.

*I am with you*, he says. *I am right here. I am just letting you drive.*

"East-southeast," I say to Soren. "A quarter-mile. Surge gave me the body."

Soren's face does something. He has shifted back. He is standing naked in the trees the way I am standing naked in the trees, and his face is doing the thing it does when something important has happened that he does not yet have a frame for.

"Reef gave me the body too."

"What does that mean."

"It means our wolves know something we don't know yet."

"Reef ever done that before."

"No."

"Surge ever done that before."

"No."

He looks at me for a long beat. We are about to run a quarter-mile through unforgiving ground with no protection because both our wolves have just handed us the wheel and told us to drive, and we do not know why, and we do not have time to figure out why before we run, and Soren is looking at me with the face he has been using on me since we were children — the *I trust you, let's go* face.

"Run," he says.

I run.

He runs. We do not bother to shift back. The trees are too dense for wolves at speed here and we are faster on two legs through the underbrush than we would be on four, and we are already moving before he finishes the word, and the pulling in my chest is getting *louder* with every step.

I have never felt anything like it.

The closest thing — and even this is wrong, the comparison fails — is the way the bond between me and Soren felt the first time we were separated as kids. He went to the western pack for a season of training. Eight weeks. I was twelve. I spent the eight weeks with a low constant pull in my chest, west, west, west, and when he came back the pull stopped and I felt the empty space where the pull had been for a full day afterward. *That* was the twin bond announcing itself. That was the bond I have lived inside for nineteen years.

This is different.

This is bigger. This is *louder*. This is something that has not been quietly humming in me since birth, this is something that has just woken up, and it is in the trees ahead of me, and it is —

*Faster*, Surge says.

He pushes. I feel him do it. It is the first time in my adult life I have felt my wolf try to come forward when I have the body. He is not *taking* the body — he can't, not without my letting him — but he is *trying*, he is pressing up against the inside of my chest like a hand against a door, and the pressure is asking the question every wolf asks his human when something matters: *let me through*.

*Surge. Stay back.*

*Cassian — *

*I know. I feel you. Stay back. I am driving.*

He stays back. He stays back because I am the one who decides, and I have decided, and Surge — for all that he is loud, and for all that he never goes all the way quiet — knows the rule we have lived by since I was four years old. Human form, human driving. Always.

But he is pushing. He has not stopped pushing. The hand against the door is still there, and I can feel him in the back of my chest like a held breath, and I am going to have to keep him back the whole way to whatever is ahead of us, and the cost of keeping him back is going to be every other thought I can spare from running.

I trip.

I trip because I am running too fast on ground I do not know well enough to run too fast on, and my left foot catches on a root I should have seen, and I go down hard and skin my knee through to the bone — and Surge *surges*, the pressure spiking, the door I am holding closed taking a hit hard enough to make my whole body shudder — and I am back up in two strides because the pulling is still pulling and the trip cost me nothing, the trip is *nothing*, and Soren is right behind me and has not commented because Soren does not comment when I am like this.

*Surge*. *Back*.

*I would have caught us.*

*I know.*

*Then let me — *

*No. We made the rule. Stay back. I need you in the back seat. I need you to *trust me* to drive.*

A long pause. Then, quieter than I expected: *I trust you. I am back. Go.*

The pressure eases. Not entirely. He has stepped back from the door but he has not left the doorway, and I am aware of him watching me run from inside my own chest, and I have never been more aware of him in my life. We have lived together for nineteen years and tonight is the first night I have felt the *shape* of him in me.

I have never been like this.

I do not know what I am like.

A hundred more yards. The pulling sharpens. I can feel it on my left now, slightly to the south of dead east, like a string that has been slack is now drawing taut, and I correct my course and Soren corrects with me — Soren is always with me, Soren has been at my flank for nineteen years and is not going to fail at it tonight — and we crest a small rise and start downslope and I *smell* her.

Blood.

A lot of blood.

The smell hits me and Surge *surges* again, harder, the door taking a hit that almost staggers me — and through the twin bond I feel Reef do the same thing in Soren, the two wolves spiking simultaneously, the two of us bracing simultaneously — and my brain does something funny, like the night air around me has gone *bright*, like the moon has gotten closer, and I lose my footing for a second because everything in me has just *focused* down to a single point in space that is fifty yards ahead of me through these trees and the single point in space is —

She is on the ground.

She is on her left side in the wet leaves and she is small, she is so small, smaller than I expected and I do not know what I expected, and her hair is dark and tangled and full of bits of the forest she has been running through and her right side is the side that is bleeding and there is blood *everywhere*, on her clothes, on the leaves around her, on the trunk of the nearest tree where she clearly pushed off it before she went down, and I am on my knees beside her before Soren has caught up.

Surge goes *silent*.

The pressure against the door stops. The held breath releases. He has stopped trying to push forward and gone the opposite direction — gone *still*, gone *attentive*, gone to the place in me he has only ever gone in moments that matter, and the silence of him is a held thing, like a chapel before a hymn. I can feel him looking at her through my eyes. I can feel him recognizing her. I can feel him do the thing he has never done in nineteen years of being my wolf —

He kneels.

Inside me. Spiritually. He *kneels*. The big bright loud golden i***t of a wolf I have shared bones with my entire life lowers his head inside my chest and goes still, and I have never seen him do this and have never imagined I would, and the silence on his side of me is the first sign — before the rest of me has caught up, before I have even closed the last twenty feet — that whatever is on the ground in front of me is something he and I have been *waiting* for without knowing we were waiting.

I do not remember closing the last twenty feet.

I do not remember anything about the closing of the last twenty feet. I will think about this later — I will think about it for *years* — but in this moment I have hands on her throat looking for a pulse and I am saying her name, or *a* name, because I do not know her name yet but my mouth has decided it is going to talk to her, and I am saying *hey, hey, can you hear me, hey* —

There is a pulse.

It is faint. It is shallow. It is *there*.

I get my fingers more firmly against her throat to be sure, and that is when Surge *surges*.

Not pushes. *Surges*. The hand against the door I have been holding closed for the last quarter-mile becomes a *body*, becomes a *wave*, becomes the entire weight of him slamming against the inside of my chest, and the door I have been holding shut *cracks*, and the cracking is loud enough that for a second I see two sets of hands on her throat — my hands and his paws, superimposed, the shift trying to start without my consent.

I shove him back.

I shove him back with everything I have. Every fiber of human-form discipline I have built in nineteen years of being a wolf comes up at once and *plants*, and the wave breaks against me, and I can feel him on the other side of the door, breathing hard, *furious* —

*Cassian, let me out.*

*No.*

*Cassian, she is dying. Let me out. Wolf form is faster. Wolf form can carry her. Wolf form can — *

*Surge. NO. I am driving. She is human. She is bleeding from a blade wound. If she opens her eyes and sees a wolf over her she is going to think the wolf is what is killing her. Stay back.*

*She is OURS — *

*I know.* I am close to shaking. The pulse under my fingers is faint and the pull in my chest is screaming and I have my fingers against the throat of a stranger and I am holding two things shut at once — Surge, who I have to hold shut because if I do not she opens her eyes to teeth, and the *bond*, which has not snapped yet but is *trying to*, is pressing on the inside of my ribs like a thunderhead waiting to break.

*Mate*, Surge says.

He does not say it the way he usually says things. He does not say it loud. He says it the way you say a name in a holy place, low and exact. *Mate. Cassian. This is our mate. Tell me you feel it. Tell me you know.*

*I feel something*, I tell him. *I do not have the rest. Not yet. Not until — *

*Until what.*

*Until she sees me. The bond does not — it has not — it is *waiting*, Surge, do you not feel that. It is right at the edge. It is right at the edge of snapping and it is not snapping and I do not know why and — *

*She is unconscious*, Surge says, very quietly, as if the thought has only just occurred to him. *She cannot see you. The bond cannot — it cannot complete the snap with her eyes closed.*

*No.*

*Cassian.*

*I know, Surge. I know.*

The understanding lands like a cold stone in my chest. I have a mate. I have a mate I have been pulled to since the moment Surge stopped running, a mate every wolf in me has been recognizing for the last ten minutes, a mate whose pulse is under my fingers right now — and the bond cannot finish what it is starting because she has not opened her eyes, and she may not open them at all, because the wound under her ribs is wider than my fist and she has been bleeding too long and her pulse is forty-something beats a minute and I am running out of time on the only thing in my life that has ever mattered this much.

Soren reaches us.

I do not hear him arrive. I do not turn around to look. I feel him drop to his knees on her other side, and I feel Reef in the back of him doing exactly what Surge has been doing in me — *recognizing*, *pulled forward*, *barely held*. The twin bond fills with him. He is here. He is here, and the two of us are looking down at her together, and her eyes are *still closed*.

*Cassian*, Surge says.

*Surge.*

*Make her open her eyes.*

*I cannot make her open her eyes.*

*Try.*

I try. I lower my face close to hers, careful of her wounds, and I say, out loud, into the trees, with nobody to hear me but Surge and my brother and the wet leaves: "Hey. Hey. I need you to open your eyes. Just for a second. Just for a second. Please. We have you. You're safe. We have you. Open your eyes."

For a long beat — nothing. Her eyelashes do not move. Her mouth does not move. The pulse under my fingers is the only thing of hers that is moving and it is moving too slow, and Surge makes a sound on the inside of my chest that I have never heard from him before, a small dry sound like he is about to break —

And then she moves.

Just a flicker. Her eyelids lift, not all the way, the smallest possible fraction. Her eyes are grey-green and unfocused and they are not looking at anything in particular, but they are *open*, and Soren and I are both leaning over her on either side of her, and her gaze drags up from somewhere very far away, and finds us.

Two faces. Two pairs of eyes.

Hers lock on for a half a beat.

*Snap*.

The bond *snaps*.

Both of us. At the same time. I feel it hit Soren the half-second it hits me because the twin bond carries the impact of it clean — his bond completing on the right side of her, mine completing on the left, the two snaps so close in time they might as well have been one. It is everything the bond has been holding back for the last fifteen minutes, the storm offshore finally let across the water, the door finally swinging open. It is not a wave, it is a *flood*. It is the opening of a room inside my chest I did not know was a room and on the other side of it is a *person*, and the person is the girl whose eyes have just found mine and my brother's, and she is *ours*. The bond does not announce her. The bond does not introduce her. The bond *recognizes* her, the way you recognize someone you have already been loving without having met them, and the recognition is so total that for a second I cannot feel my hands or hear the trees or remember my own name. There is only *her*. There is only the snap. There is only the bond completing in me, full and bright and final, the way I have heard old bonded pack members describe it, the way I never imagined would happen to me, and it has happened to me, it is happening to me, it is *done*.

I am her mate.

She is mine.

She is *ours*.

Soren makes a sound that is not a word. A small involuntary sound, the kind of sound he never makes, and I look across her at him and his face has gone — there are no words for what his face has gone, and I am not going to find them tonight. He is looking at her with the still I have never seen on him before and his eyes are wet. Soren's eyes are *wet*. I have not seen Soren's eyes wet since we were nine years old and our grandfather died, and I am going to remember the wet-eyes for the rest of my life.

Surge — Surge has stopped fighting me. He has stopped surging. He has gone to the chapel quiet, and the chapel is so quiet inside my chest I can hear my own pulse against the inside of it, and his voice when he speaks comes in low and reverent and *settled*. *Mate*, he says. *Cassian. The bond has snapped. We are hers. We are hers. We are hers.*

*Yes*, I tell him. *We are hers.*

Reef agrees through the twin bond. Quiet. Settled. *Yes.*

She is gone again a half-second later. Her eyes close. Her body goes slack.

But the bond stays. The bond stays *open*, fully snapped, fully *mine and his*, humming on the inside of my ribs at a register I have never lived inside before — and on the other end of it, faint, very faint, almost not there, I can feel *her*. I can feel her dying body. I can feel her heartbeat from inside myself. I can feel that she is tired down to a depth I do not yet have the right to understand. The bond is feeding me information I have not earned and have no business knowing yet, and the information is *terrifying*, because what the bond is telling me about the inside of her is that she has been alone for a long time.

She has been alone.

She has been alone, and someone tried to kill her, and she ran — and the bond gives me the last thing she thought before she went down, the thing that lives at the surface of her unconscious mind like a stone in shallow water — *good*. She thought *good*. She lay down in our trees thinking *good*, and I do not yet have a frame for that thought, and I am going to spend years finding the frame.

Across her, Soren has gone perfectly still. He is feeling the same things I am feeling. The bond is in both of us at once.

He looks at me.

His eyes say: *did you get the same — *

My eyes say: *yes*.

His eyes say: *good — she thought good — *

My eyes say: *I know*.

His eyes say: *Cassian.*

My eyes say: *I know.*

His eyes say: *we are taking her home and she is not going to die*.

My eyes say: *we are taking her home and she is not going to die.*

And then I see it — the thing I have been looking at without seeing, because the bond hit me too hard to see anything else for the last thirty seconds.

The bruise on the side of her face.

It does not match the blade wounds. It is older. It is yellow at the edges and dark in the middle, and the shape of it is the shape of a hand, and the hand was not the same hand that brought the blade tonight because that hand worked too fast and this hand had time. This hand bruised her face days ago, possibly a week ago, possibly longer, and the bruise has been healing while the rest of her has gone on living a life with a person who put a hand on her face hard enough to leave that.

Surge — who has been in the chapel quiet, who has been *settled*, who has been bowed-head reverent for the entirety of the snap — sees it the same second I see it, and *growls*.

It is not a sound he makes inside my chest often. It is the sound the wolf in him makes when something has been *taken* from him — and the bond has just snapped, the thing in front of me is *his*, and what he is looking at on her face is evidence that the thing that is his was being hurt before he ever knew she existed. The growl rises up through the inside of my ribs and into the back of my throat, and I have to clench my jaw to keep it from coming out of my mouth as my own sound.

*Surge*, I tell him. *I see it.*

*Cassian*. His voice has gone *flat*, gone *level*. *The bruise on her face is older than the cuts.*

*I know.*

*Cassian.*

*I know. Hold. Hold. We are not going anywhere until she is on a table.*

He holds. Barely. The growl stays — an under-channel running low and steady, parallel to the bond, parallel to the recognition, parallel to everything else that is happening in me at once.

And across her, through the twin bond, the fury hits Soren.

I feel it the second he sees what I have just seen. The bond between him and me has been wide open since the snap, the twin bond doubled inside the new bond, the two channels running together so loud I can read his interior almost as clearly as my own. Reef *snarls* through Soren. A single hard hot pulse — *someone hurt her before tonight, the bruise is days old, somebody was hurting our mate and she was living with it, when she is healed we find him, when we find him we take him apart* — and Surge's growl rises to meet it, and the two wolves are agreeing inside us at a register that is older than language and older than the pack and older than any of us.

I close my eyes for a half a second because I have to or I am going to shift.

I open them. I look at my brother.

His face has not moved. His face has not done one thing. But his eyes are *hot* in a way they have never been hot, and he is breathing through his nose because if he breathed through his mouth I would hear what kind of breath it was, and he is holding Reef the way I am holding Surge.

We do not speak. We do not need to.

The bond between us says: *yes. Later. Yes.*

"Reef tried to take you," I say.

"At the snap. Yes. You held Surge."

"Barely. Same."

"The bruise."

"I know."

"Older than tonight."

"I know."

A beat. His jaw works. Then, level: "Pulse?"

"Faint."

"Wounds?"

"Two visible. Side and arm. Side is deeper. Bruise on her face is older."

"Move her."

"Yes."

"Now."

"Yes."