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So fuck them.
The EarthSpine Alpha laughed and growled something under his breath, like he was gnawing on an especially tasty bone. “Are you going to try to take SilverPaw back for yourself?”
“Are you offering to assist in the conquest?”
A click of the teeth. “I could be… persuaded.”
I studied my abused nails. “Interesting, but no. The buzzards can have that carcass.”
Laughter. “I like how the debt between us will be settled. You know where to find our heart, yes?”
“I do.”
“Good. Arrive when you like. I will tell my warriors they are going to have a new playmate.”
My healed silver wound tingled. I traced the outline of FrostFur’s sigil with my fingertip.
Then I shifted into wolf form, carefully padded down the stairs (so as not to mark up Cerys’ beautiful hardwood floors) and went outside to join Jun.
Jun was parading around the yard with a huge tree branch in his mouth.
I limped a bit on the still-cracked bones in my left paw and my aching foreleg, and settled down into the snow, content to sniff the breeze and just be somewhere not a city for a while.
Jun was a huge—and I mean huge— black wolf with the plush, fluffy coat of a North American bred. He probably outweighed the already large Sterling by twenty pounds. Gorgeous midnight-black fur, and bright blue eyes, big paws, and the tips of his ears bent over.
He brought me his big stick, then continued to tear around sniffing everything, digging everything, and chewing on everything. And I mean everything: rocks, sticks, unidentifiable clumps. My quiet snowbathing became drop that, stop that, get over here, whatever you’re doing you better knock it off, I don’t know what’s in your mouth but spit it out, don’t pee on that, don’t dig holes, wolves can’t climb trees.
He constantly dragged things over to me to identify: what’s that smell? What’s that thing? Can I eat this?
“How old are you?” I asked as I identified the thirty-seventh scent for him.
He bounced off in search of something else without replying.
I sighed.
Sterling loped out of the woods with something in his mouth.
He broke into a jog that skimmed the snow and deposited a white hare in front of me. His tongue lolled out of his bloody snout and he sat down to observe my reaction.
A rabbit! Neat, clean, single-bite kill, the pelt unmolested and barely bloody.
He pawed at the snow and smelled overwhelmingly smug.
My heart overflowed. I snatched the rabbit in my jaws and darted away a few steps. I settled in the snow and gave the rabbit a few symbolic gnaws to indicate I would have eaten it if I could have. Unfortunately, Cerys was expecting us for dinner.
Sterling waited expectantly for my verdict on if the trinket pleased me.
I gave it a few more gnaws, then wagged my tail. “You seem competent enough.”
Sterling snuffed.
Jun, watching, crouched in the snow a distance off, wriggled his way on his belly towards Sterling, then pressed past him to horn in on the rabbit. Sterling batted him on the head with one paw. Jun whined and whined, and reduced himself to rolling over in a pleading puppy pose.
I took another chew of the rabbit, debating if I did want to eat it and just be stuck in wolf form the next twelve hours while I digested it. How bad would Cerys’ wrath really be?
Jun whined and whimped like a puppy. Sterling had a paw over his throat and he still whined and whined.
I sighed, picked up the rabbit, and dropped it in front of him. He flopped over in a spray of snow and mouthed it like a puppy.
