Page 224 of Crucible
As if I summoned her, I see a flash of tawny fur.
The mother wolf darts from the tree line with something clutched in her mouth. She drops the bloody piece of carcass near the den and starts sniffing around. I do not doubt she can smell the bear when she whines. Sympathy twists my stomach.
I have no idea if her pups are okay.
They haven’t made a sound or emerged from the den in the entire—I check my watch and grumble at the time—three hours—I’ve been waiting for their mom to return.
She’s back, which means my babysitting duties are over, but I stay where I am with my gaze focused on the mouth of the den.
I feel the mother wolf’s pain as she whimpers and whines before disappearing inside the den. Three minutes later, she emerges again with one…two…threepups running, tumbling, and pouncing at her heels.
The largest one is black with a small tawny patch at the top of its snout. It paces anxiously between the mother wolf’s front legs while the other two—a gray wolf and a white one tussle and bite into each other.
The pups can’t be more than two feet long from snout to tail and weigh no more than a gallon of milk. They’re at the age when their heads and paws are too big for their small, wiggling bodies.
They’readorable.
And very much alive.
Most importantly, the pups are safe now with their mother to watch over them.
I can go home now.
My stomach growls, and I realize I haven’t eaten yet, so I climb down as quietly as possible, but it’s no use.
Wolves have exceptional hearing.
The moment my feet touch the ground, and I turn, I see the mother wolf staring at me through the trees while her babies tear into the buck she’d stolen from me.
I’m not close enough to present a threat, but I still back away slowly, waiting for her to growl or bare her teeth like she did the other times we’ve crossed paths. After a long and intense stare-down, the tawny wolf turns away and trots over to her ruined den. She plops down inside at the mouth of the hole where shecan watch over her young. Only then does my stomach unknot itself, and I can breathe again.
Holy shit.
I guess it’s fortunate she stole my kill. I have no doubt the wolf would have fed me to her kids if she wasn’t full of Bambi’s father.
The moment I turn to leave, I walk straight into the jaws of another predator, and I scream.
Green eyes, olive skin slick with sweat, and a furious expression stare back at me. “What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“Seth! God!” I punch his chest, and he grunts. “I was almost eaten twice today. Don’t scare me like that, you jerk!” Lifting my mask until it rests on top of my head, my nervous gaze moves behind him, expecting to see the others. “Where’s Thorin and Khalil?”
“Pissed and looking for you.”Of course, they are.“Now answer me. What are you doing out here?”
I hold up my compound bow. “Hunting.” Seth immediately looks skeptical. “Seriously. I caught a buck with one shot. You should have seen it. I wassobadass.”
Seth’s subdued gaze studies mine carefully, and then he turns me around, checking me over for injuries. I swear he evensniffsme as if he can scent out the lie about where I’ve been.
See what I mean? My boyfriends are savages.
“Seth, I didn’t try to run,” I say when he takes my bow from me and straps it to his back.
“You were gone for hours, Sunshine.”
“Because you bitches wouldn’t give me a radio, and I got lost!”
“You have a map.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, but it was pretty much useless without a starting point. I don’t know this place as well as you three.”
