They Cut Me Loose, So I Bound Their Enemy

Chapter Two

They wouldn't let me touch him.

I tried. I got three steps back toward the old warrior before two of Theron's guards stepped in front of me, shoulder to shoulder, like a door slamming.

"Let me help him," I said. "That leg needs a tourniquet. Now."

"You've helped enough," one of them said.

Hesper pushed past them with her bag already open. She knelt in the blood and didn't look up at me. "Go home, Tamsin. Pack. Go."

Home. I didn't have one anymore.

I went anyway.

The cottage behind the infirmary had been mine for five years. Not the Alpha house. Theron said I slept better near my work, and I believed him, because I believed everything. I stood in the doorway and counted. One. Two. Three. Then I moved.

Two dresses. Wool socks. Flint. The good knife. My healer's satchel, the leather one with my mother's initials burned into the flap, stuffed with yarrow, willow bark, clean linen, a needle and gut thread. I didn't take a single thing Theron gave me. It made for a very small bag.

My wolf lay curled somewhere under my ribs. I reached for her the way you'd press a bruise. She flinched. When I tried to call the shift, nothing came. Not even a tingle in my fingers.

So I'd be running on two legs.

Fine.

The moon was sliding low when I reached the north gate. Nobody stopped me. Nobody said goodbye. A few curtains twitched along the lane and went still.

Someone was waiting at the gate post.

"Hesper."

She stepped out of the shadow. Her braid had come loose, and blood had dried brown on her sleeves up to the elbow. She smelled like iron and smoke.

"Is he alive?" I asked.

"For now." She looked at me for a long moment. Longer than she'd looked at me all night. "What happened up there, child?"

"I don't know."

It was true. I'd asked myself the whole walk down. The light. The lines. The cup breaking. The weight sliding off my back, and then that scream.

Hesper took my left hand and turned it over. Her thumb settled on the burn scar on my palm. It was still warm. She felt it. I watched her feel it.

"Your mother wanted you to have this," she said. "If you were ever sent away."

She pressed something cold into my hand. A locket. Tarnished silver, no bigger than a walnut, on a thin chain. A crescent moon cut into the front.

"You've had this the whole time?" My voice cracked. "Sixteen years and you never..."

"She made me promise. Only if you were sent away." Hesper folded my fingers over it. "For luck."

I tried to open it right there. My nail slid along the seam. Nothing. It was shut tight, like someone had soldered it.

"It won't open."

"Then it isn't time." She turned me by the shoulders, the way she used to turn me toward the herb shelves when I was eight. "Go north. Keep the stream on your left until it splits, then take the high side. The Thornline is thinnest there. Don't stop to sleep until the trees change."

"How do you know the way?"

A pause. Very small.

"I was young once," Hesper said. "Go. Before Theron changes his mind about dawn."

I went.

I didn't look back. I wanted to. I counted my steps instead.

The stream ran black and loud on my left. I kept it there. The valley fell away behind me, Greyfen's lanterns shrinking to sparks, and then the trees closed in and the sparks were gone.

The Thornline isn't called that for nothing. Blackthorn grows thick between the pines, and every branch wants a piece of you. By the time the stream split, my sleeves were shredded and my hands were bleeding in a dozen places. I took the high side.

That's when I smelled them.

Rogues. Sour and wet, like a dog left out in the rain. Three. No. Four. Coming from downhill, fast.

I ran.

Running on two legs through blackthorn in the dark is stupid. I knew it was stupid while I did it. A root caught my boot and I went down hard on one knee. Got up. Something crashed through the brush behind me, close enough that I heard it pant.

"Little Luna," a voice called. Rough. Laughing. A man's voice coming out of half a wolf's throat. "Little lost Luna. They said you'd come this way."

They said.

Who said?

No time to think about it. The ground ended. I skidded on wet stone at the edge of a gully, the stream roaring somewhere below, and turned with my back to the drop.

They came out of the trees one by one. Four rogues, half shifted, ribs showing, eyes yellow and hungry. The biggest one grinned with a mouth full of too many teeth.

I pulled the good knife. My hand shook so hard the blade wobbled.

And then I saw it again.

The lines.

Faint this time. Dirty silver, thin as hair. One ran from the big rogue's chest to each of the others, tying them together. Knotted ugly and tight, like rope someone tied in a hurry and never untied.

A pack bond. A bad one.

I didn't think. I don't remember deciding. I just reached out with my free hand and closed my fingers on nothing. On the air. On the line.

And I pulled.

It came apart like rotten thread.

The big rogue howled. The other three staggered like someone had kicked their legs out from under them. One of them stared at the leader like he'd never seen him before in his life. Then he snarled and went for his throat instead of mine.

In five seconds they were fighting each other. In ten they were gone, crashing downhill, yelping and tearing.

I stood at the edge of the gully with my hand still raised.

Something warm ran over my lip. I touched it. Blood. My nose was bleeding. The world tipped sideways, and for a second I lost the trees, the sound, everything.

When it came back, I was on my knees.

What did I just do?

What am I?

The forest had gone silent. Not the normal kind. The kind that happens when something bigger than everything else walks in.

Branches cracked. Not loud. Deliberate.

A wolf stepped out of the dark on the far side of the clearing.

I'd seen big wolves. Theron's wolf was big. This one was something else. Gray-black, shaggy at the neck, shoulders level with my chin. Silver eyes. They caught the last of the moonlight and held it.

He looked at the blood on my face. At the knife in my hand. At my satchel, and the herbs spilling out of the torn flap.

He breathed in. Slow. Like he was reading me.

Then the wolf was gone and a man stood in its place. Tall. Bare chested in the cold like it didn't matter. A broken nose. Silver veins running up both forearms, faint under the skin, like frost on glass.

His voice was low and flat and not one bit surprised.

"You're on my land, healer."