Eden looked at the little wolf, his triangular ears pressed back into his fur and he looked scared. Lonely. “So what happens when she wakes him?”
“I don’t know. The last time she had Fahlow at her side, her pack was unstoppable. When they’re not frenzied by bloodlust they can be a remarkable weapon.”
“If he was one of yours, grandma, how did she get him to switch sides?”
Dorie smiled at Rowan. “Grief and loss can do terrible things to a soul, and she forced him to feast on those of his pack. Her wolves slaughtered his family and the beast inside him couldn’t resist the offering of blood.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “There is a chance, that maybe he’ll be his old self again in this reincarnation.”
Hope touched her voice and so Eden didn’t say a word. If the wolf had fallen once to bloodlust, she doubted he’d have the strength to avoid it this time. The four of them sat in silence for a long time, staring at the book open between them, not a single one of them daring to touch it. She’d seen monsters in that book she never wanted to see come to life.
Hell, she’s seen monsters in life she never wanted to see again.
“Your wolf, Eden,” Dorie said softly. “How sure are you that he’s on your side?”
She was sure. It wasn’t even that she didn’t think someone could be that good of an actor, it was more than that. Warmth spread through her on the back of an emotion she wasn’t ready to name. The man that had kissed her, the man so worried he was becoming something terrible—he wasn’t a monster.
“I’m sure.”
“He saved her life,” Rowan said. “They were attacked by a troll and he saved her.”
“He nearly died doing it,” Kennedy added.
Dorie’s eyebrows arched at that. “He attacked a troll? Damn. I have never heard anything like that.”
“And I rarely hear you swear, Nana.” Rowan let loose the first real grin at the table since her grandmother had sat down and they all laughed.
“Desperate times, love.” But her face had turned serious again as she looked between the three of them. “Tonight. All three of you need to be at Rowan’s. I have little magic this deep into winter and no way of reaching my queen. But I need to help you three survive until spring begins to leech away Morrigan’s strangle hold on Mercy Pass.”
Eden remembered her statement that a lot of people were going to die. A shiver trailed down her spine. She couldn’t help but wonder...how many people already had?
Bay leaned against his truck, the collar of his jacket lifted to combat the wind’s violent gusts. Nightfall lingered just beyond the horizon, like a weight settling deep into his bones and entrenching itself in his gut, he could feel it filling him up, beginning to pull at him. He’d never been so instinctively drawn to a time of day. And it wouldn’t matter if he suddenly went blind tomorrow, he’d forever know when the moon started to rise and the sun gave way to her powerful spell.
Eden’s dogs barked in her yard and Bay tilted his head to see her hurrying down the front steps towards him. Nervous energy wafted around her, like the swirl of the wind, he could feel it teasing over his skin. It made the wolf in him edgy. He didn’t like her nervous. If there was danger, he wanted to know about it.
She shot him a jaunty smile, but it felt forced. “Thanks for agreeing to come with me.”
He frowned at her. “If it’s just to Rowan’s why do you feel so skittish?”
The dogs barked again and Eden glanced back of her shoulders at her dogs, wringing her hands together. “It’ll be the first time they’ve been left alone since the troll came here. Do you think they’ll be okay?”
His nostrils flared as he scented her. She was nervous, but this wasn’t the underlying cause. Still, he turned his attention to the dogs. They hid in their houses when anything came close and the wolves hadn’t shown interest in them yet. It didn’t, however, mean they were safe. He remembered the clawing bloodlust, the need to feed.
“They’d be safer inside if you can trust them in there. Not much. I can stay with them.”
“No. I need you to come too.” She touched his arm and the look in her eyes was so genuine it tightened around his heart, made him want to reach towards her and pull her up against him. Kiss her. Soothe away the fears that seemed to gnaw at her. “But hang on.”
She sprinted towards the dogs and he watched as one by one, she unclipped them and led them towards the house. He thought of helping, but outside of Smugger—the first she’d led inside—not a single one would let him near them. They’d stopped hiding in his presence, but their trust hadn’t grown so far as to let him touch them, yet.
So he waited still, his attention drifting back to the forest, already searching for danger. Time had made his wolf more confident, and the continual roar of new instincts in the back of his head was beginning to subside. He could still feel the various needs opening inside him, a huge, gaping black hole in the pit of his stomach, but slowly, Bay was getting better at ignoring it.
Soon, he wouldn’t stand here simply guarding. Soon, he’d go into the woods and hunt Morrigan and her creations down. Then Eden was back at the truck and he hopped into the passenger seat next to her. “So why is it so important that I go with you tonight?”
She was silent as she backed the truck down the drive and turned it onto the road. She chewed her bottom lip, scooted around in her seat, fiddled with the volume on the radio. Bay sighed and finally she relented. “Rowan’s grandmother had a book on all of this.” She glanced at him. “You are something called a winter wolf. One of Morrigan’s guardians and a source of her power.”
That sounded about right. His wolf no longer saw the point, after bonding with Bay, but he remembered well enough the first night he’d been conscious as a wolf. “Does it say anything about how to kill her?”
The question seemed to startle her and she looked at him for a moment before snapping her attention back to the road. “Uh. I don’t know. We didn’t look that far. We can check tonight.” He nodded, but she plowed on. “You can’t think of doing it yourself.”
“Why not? None of her other wolves will and I’m no longer human. Not fully.” She started to protest and he touched her arm, silencing her with a soft growl. “I’m not, Eden. And I stand the best chance against her.”
“Not against a whole pack of wolves and trolls and banshees. Bay, you’re outnumbered.”
But he had to do something. He still remembered the man bloody in the snow, Morrigan pulling him up to feast. He had to have been dead come morning and how many more were like him? How many more would die in the future? Bay couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t just turn his back and pretend bad things weren’t happening.
Rowan lived close to town. He could see the shimmering lamplight from her drive way as Eden pulled in. The sky had darkened fast and now a nearly fat moon hung in the air, not quite full, but he could almost feel its lure just like he could feel the pull of night. Then an older woman stepped onto the front porch, her face illuminated by the light on the garage and Bay found himself studying her. She felt...different.
“That’s Dorie, Ro’s grandma.” The one who knew. She stared right at him, her body stiff, and Bay could feel the coiled threat surrounding her. He shouldn’t have come, one look at her and he knew that now. Then Eden’s door opened and he found his attention drifting back to her. “Come on.”
And despite the older woman’s unhappiness, he didn’t care that he wasn’t wanted. Eden wanted him here. That was enough. Bay slipped out of the car after her and followed her. He recognized the two women who stepped out behind the woman Eden called Dorie and instantly he found himself smiling.
“Hey Bay,” Rowan said and leaned around her grandmother to take his hand. He watched the other woman stiffen, drawing back a step, but he took Ro’s hand. “This is my nana.”
She let go of his hand and nudged her grandmother. “Doreen Bast,” she said, her eyes watching him, wary.
“Dorie, he’s a friend. More than a friend.” Eden’s hand found his arm, her smooth fingertips sliding over his skin. Like always, she grounded him, welcomed him. Bay leaned into her touch.
A distant howl rang out from the forest and Bay felt the sudden spike of tension, tasted the flavor of fear in the group. Only Eden felt calm, relaxed, but she was used to the wolves haunting the forest edge and him keeping them back.
“Are they following you or me?” she asked Bay.
“I don’t know.” He couldn’t see them yet, they were still lost to the shadows of the night, but something inside him told him they were coming closer. Hunting. He found himself stepping towards the forest, his wolf shoving up until the beast rode just under his skin. For once Morrigan didn’t try and call him, her sweet voice no longer a deadly siren in the forest, but he still felt the need to shift tonight. To pull fur over skin and let the animal roam free.
Soon, but not yet
. His wolf went quiet. He looked at Eden over his shoulder, his gaze drifting to the women behind her and then back to her. Icy eyes held his, chaining him here with her. She held out her hand and he took it, letting her draw him back to her side. Still, he kept himself angled between her and the forest. Just in case.
Then Doreen Bast drew out a small velveteen sack and he felt the wolf twist inside him, struggling to back away. He flinched and let loose a quiet growl, barely audible, but he felt her gaze drift to his. “You’re of the Fae. One of hers.”
She is too
. The knowledge came instantly, some sixth sense of his wolf’s that let him know she was just as different as he was. Breathing in her scent, he found it then. Not quite human. Feline? Something he couldn’t place. “What are you?” he asked her, refusing to back down, even as she bared the iron bars wrapped in cloth.
Doreen’s skin never touched them, and he knew by some distant memory of his wolf’s that if one of those bars touched his skin it would burn like poison. Kennedy leaned over and peered at them. “I thought you needed silver bullets for werewolves?”
“They are not werewolves.” The howls rang closer, filling the night song with an eerie taint that slipped over shadows and spilled into the darkened crevices of the night. “They’re Fae and iron will kill us.”
She gestured to Kennedy. “Take one and you too, Eden.”
“What about me?” Rowan asked. Bay watched as her hand fisted at her side, then opened, as if she were fighting with herself not to reach out and take one.
Once Eden and Kennedy had each taken one of the slim bars, she held it out to Rowan. “Move slow. Reach to take one. Stop if you feel any sort of burning. I’m not sure how much of me and of the Summer Fae, you have in you.”
Bay watched as Rowan lifted her hand, her gazing shooting tentatively to her grandmother before her hand inched closer. He watched her pause a few inches above the bars and hover, then her fingers began to dip. His wolf squirmed, uneasy, and the scent of flesh beginning to burn reached his nose. “Stop,” he told her, and Rowan winced but pulled away.
“I can’t touch it,” she said and when she looked up it was to meet his gaze. “Could you?”
“No.” And he didn’t even try. Doreen had been right. Touching it would burn, but if it pierced his skin, it could easily kill him.
Carefully, Doreen covered the remaining bars once more and slipped them back into their pouch. “Good, we can go inside now.”
She tilted her head to usher them in as the howling rose to a crescendo in the forest, so close it lifted the hair on Bay’s neck. The urge to turn and fight rode through him, a longing for blood and battle settling into his veins.
“Is there a way to kill Morrigan?” Eden asked and a wolf snarled from the forest, diving out of the shadows and into the light by Rowan’s garage. It snapped its teeth at air but Bay found himself whirling automatically. He leapt down from the porch to land in its way, still human, but just barely. “Bay!”
He heard her, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around. The wolf snarled up at Eden, ears pinned back into white ruff. Two more skirted the edge of the trees and Bay poured his wolf out, willingly embracing the change. It came fast and easy, like blinking or breathing, and suddenly he was on four paws between them and Eden. The tattered remains of his clothes fell to the ground.
A growl snaked from him, like the deadly curl of a cobra unfurling, lashing out. The wolf closest to him sank back, tail tucking. It snarled at him, its white teeth flashing in the light, but it made no move to attack him. Bay stalked closer, his tail curling over his back in a display of dominance. For Eden and her friends he’d fight them all.
“Bay!” Eden called again, her voice ripe with fear. One ear flicked back towards her, but he lunged at the wolf closest. His teeth sank down on nothing but air as he landed short of the other, pulling up so that they didn’t collide. A warning, and one they all heeded, darting back into the shadows of the forest.
He knew they were still there, haunting the edges, but the immediate threat had vanished with the visual. Turning back to her, Bay wagged his tail. Doreen tilted her head slightly. “Bay?” she asked. He nodded. “I’ll be. I’ve never seen one of Morrigan’s still remain human.”
“You didn’t believe us,” Rowan said, stuffing her hands into her coat.
“No, child. Can you shift back?”
Could he? Yes.
He could force his wolf to concede, but why and for what cost? As far as he was concerned, as a man he stood no chance against the wolves behind him. In this form at least, they had a shot. Even with a pack, the other winter wolves seemed reluctant to challenge him. Still, they’d proven themselves a danger and Bay wouldn’t allow a threat to Eden or those she considered family.