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I couldn’t say silver and that was the only thing that came to mind.
He shook me. “What caused this! Winter, what did they use!”
“Poison.” He had called me Winter. Finally! Success!
“What kind of poison?” He shook me a few times more.
“Adder.” That’s what we told doctors, right? A puff adder. Maybe it was a different adder or viper. No, it was puff adder. That’s what we told them. That’s what Sterling’s parents had told doctors.
“Is there an antidote?” More shaking.
Antidote? He was hilarious. Even if there was, FrostFur would never give it to us. I tried to push him aside. The FrostFur’s faces pressed against the windows. No, couldn’t let them see that their Alpha had won. I was meaner and tougher than that lead bitch Mercedes. That leering, stupid, war-mongering, ignorant bitch, this was all so needless, and I had a chess game to finish—
My overwhelmed brain switched off.
Lizard Brain Politics
The cabin door opened. This time I flinched and almost whimpered.
It was an hour until dawn, still dark and cold, but Hamid had woken me up, dragged me to the couch and arranged me in some semblance of health so I wouldn’t be laying down when the FrostFur zoo opened and people came to peer through the windows at the main attraction.
Hamid got an A+ with bonus credit for two things: he accepted the crazy story I’d fed him, and he took the requirements of dealing with it seriously. Not a whole lot of obnoxious balking and questioning why and what’s going on and not until you explain this! He deserved to retire after this. Just cut the man a huge check and set him up with his own private greenhouse so he could sell rare orchids online the rest of his days between jetting off to whatever exotic extreme triathlon he fancied.
Alan had cut me with silver. Once I actually got my addled brain to process that reality, I might be able to move on to other considerations, but I kept tripping over he cut me with silver.
Spring was the wolf on the other side of the door. I squinted at her. “Spring?”
Her face was drawn as she unwound her scarf and hung it on the pegs by the door. She also took off her wool mittens.
Hamid saw her too, so I wasn’t hallucinating from the silver-fever.
She pulled a chair over to the little table and sat across from me. She unzipped her coat, and pulled out a small, plastic-wrapped bundle. “You tricked me, Winter, and I’m not happy about it. Don’t think I’ve forgiven you. I never will.”
There’s nothing that can be said to that. She was a she-wolf, and she was FrostFur. I was SnowFang. We both had our duty.
“Jared won’t even speak to me. I don’t exist to this pack right now. Even my kids are ashamed of me.” Her voice trembled.
“I’m sorry.” And I was sorry. Not sorry that I’d come there, not sorry I’d used her. I was sorry it’d come to all this so needlessly. The Mortcombes were harmless. The GranitePaw were the dangerous ones.
“I don’t want your sorry. That’s not what I’m here for.” She shoved the bundles at me. “I promised Autumn I’d give these to you when you were mated. You’re no one to me anymore, but she died my sister.”
Spring shoved the bundle into my gut.
It was a couple of items in a thick, clear plastic bag that had been doubled over, tied with twine, and the twine knot covered in blue wax. Another second wax seal marked with my mother’s sigil crowned the knot. The seal of the SilverPaw Luna.
The wax covering the twine was intact and only flaked from age.
“She sent this to me when she found out she was dying.” Spring’s voice was thick with emotion. “You had to have it when you were mated, or when you turned twenty-five, and she made me promise to keep it a secret. She swore to me you’d mate before twenty-five and go far away and—nevermind. She was my big sister, and you did me wrong, but I won’t do her wrong.”
My grandparents and cousins had watched Alan carve me up. Spring still had the fortitude to come and spit on me and tell me what a royal disappointment I was.
I touched the seal with my fingers. The pictures, all arranged like a flower’s petals, pointing me here, to Spring. To this.
She jolted me out of my wit-wandering. “Open it. I’ve kept it secret so long I deserve to know what’s in it. She put her damned seal on it!”
I rolled the words around in my head, and asked, nonplussed, “You resented Mom?”
Spring pursed her lips. “You think I kept that ten years because I resented my little sister? That’s your father’s way of thinking. I loved her. I’m done with surprises and I’m not going to get tricked again. You know what it’s done to my family to find out Mortcombe is my nephew? Everyone acts like I knew and colluded with you!”
