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The SilverPaw shadows surged over him and consumed his silvery-blue form in a tide of tawny browns and musty silvers.
“Mate!” I barked, unwilling to say his name as Silver. The EarthSpine stood frozen as the snarls and tussle of male flesh twisted and writhed. I plunged forward to help, Charles grabbed me by the ruff and yanked me back.
“Are you insane!” Charles growled as another EarthSpine held onto my ruff and I barked at the tumble of SilverPaw.
The shadowy tide untwisted as Sterling flung one of the youngsters off him. Jerron lunged at him, and the two males twisted into a tumble of snarls. Sterling untangled himself, but Jerron shot forward, swiped at Sterling with a claw and raked a strip of flesh off my mate’s snout. Sterling lunged with a growl and tumbled the two of them into the snow.
Jerron twisted and snapped. His jaws closed over Sterling’s left foreleg with a snap! Blood bloomed against my mate’s silvery pelt. My brother tossed Sterling off him with a bunny kick, and the two males broke apart.
Jerron grinned, fangs smeared with blood.
Sterling stood square on four legs despite the blood dripping off his muzzle and down his foreleg. He tossed his head and wagged his tail, maw open in a lupine grin. “You compliment me, Elder Alpha.”
Jerron howled his rage and—
“Enough!” Daniel grabbed Jerron by the ruff. “You fool! Don’t waste prestige on him! He’s already taken some, and you want to give him more!”
“He’s no match for me.” Jerron snarled.
Daniel snarled something I couldn’t hear, but whatever it was, it got Jerron’s attention. Jerron snapped at Daniel, grabbed his ear flap, and drew a few drops of blood.
Jerron was a big, handsome wolf in that form, a compact, broad body type with huge jaws and a dense physique. Sterling had much larger claws, and larger fangs, but Jerron outweighed him.
Sterling growled a challenge, tail up, not caring about the blood soaking one of his paws from the bite wound on his foreleg.
Some sense managed to permeate Jerron’s typical cloud of idiocy. “We will meet at the tenth hour. We will open the box together.”
“We are not negotiating proper behavior. Come here so I can rip out your throat and place it at my mate’s paws.”
Jerron’s growl vibrated in his throat. My brother might have been a pissant loser upgraded to petty tyrant for reasons I didn’t understand, but he was a competent SilverPaw warrior. Sterling was already bleeding, the EarthSpine would bail on us, and we were deep in SilverPaw territory. Jerron would happily let Anais go if it meant he could kill Sterling.
I circled around the males until I was on Sterling’s flank. He snapped at me to stay back. I shoved my head into his ruff instead. His growl vibrated against the crown of my head, and I keened softly to implore him to walk away from this. Jerron had beaten him this time, now they were even, but the prestige advantage was still his.
The box was gone, and this fight was stupid. The family checkbook and bills had been shoved in my hands right after Mom’s funeral. I’d never seen a bill or notice about an unpaid box. Nothing on any bank statements. Nothing of Mom’s had ever come up missing. Nobody had wondered what had happened to a such-and-such. My grandparents and aunt were still alive. No rumors or whispers or gossip. Mom had been an Elder Luna, and that came with its share of enemies and malcontents, but nothing to put in a box, explosive or not. Mom hadn’t been sentimental, and she’d had no patience for sentimentality either.
We weren’t going to die on that hillside over nothing.
I wanted to believe my mother had left me some trinket, something of her, but she wouldn’t have. My mother had faced her death with the same here-and-now pragmatism she’d faced her life. She’d set herself to writing a notebook full of things I’d need to know as I became an adult. The only reason I knew anything about being a she-wolf was because she’d had enough composure in her last few weeks of life to make sure I would survive. She’d had no time for tears. Hers, mine, or anyone else’s.
“Please,” I implored him.
Sterling bent his neck. His bleeding snout wrinkled with a snarl. “We won’t wait for you.”
“Agreed.” Jerron pointed his snout at a female SilverPaw hunter and ordered her to escort us back to the border.
She and I were cousins.
At the border, burning yellow and red with the early light of day, she turned away from me, and snarled, “Abomination.”
On The Subject Of Silver
The truck was still there. And it hadn’t sunk into the semi-frozen muck yet either. Bonus.
It was late: nine-thirty. Sterling and I were filthy, starving, soaked, smelly, and our hands and feet were raw. Sterling had three days of scruff on his jaw, a red slash across his face, and bite marks on his left forearm. The bite had swollen up and bruised, not helped by the twelve miles overland we’d had to go.
Anais wordlessly passed the key to me. I shoved it into my jeans pocket, put back on my wedding rings, and climbed into the cab of our truck.
I groaned and put my head back. Instantly regretted it as sleep tried to steal me. I rubbed my eyes. “You awake?”
