Page 65 of Legacy Ascended

Torres puts his nose in my ear, and then he's gone.

He's well out across the field before he even looks back, and what comes down the bond isn't a word, obviously, but it might as well be. Well?

I run.

The ground flies beneath me. Nobody is chasing me. I'm not running toward a gate or away from a weapon. I'm running because I can.

My chest opens up. My lungs are expanding. The air is cold enough to burn, and the world arrives as smell — wet moss, frost, sheep on the far hill, and the four familiar scents of my mates running around me.

I’m good. No jumping, nothing that needs climbing, and I go around the broken ground above the field rather than over it, which is genuinely irritating.

Torres is delighted and going nowhere fast.

Luke finds the cleanest line and comes up on my right without appearing to try, does not look at me once, and is absolutely racing me.

Soren runs on my left, on the bad side, matching stride for stride — and then, halfway up the slope, he cuts in front of Torres at an angle Torres was not expecting, and Torres has to put extra steps in, and the iron-gray wolf goes past him without turning his head at all.

Torres's outrage comes down the bond.

And Ander holds himself in at first. I can feel him doing it — pace matched, position correct, everything exactly as it should be — and then something lets go and the golden wolf drops his head and goes, and suddenly he is faster than any of them.

At the top I pull up and walk, which is the rule, and they all come back to walking with me without anybody making a thing of it.

Then Luke runs close enough that our flanks brush, and pulls away, which for Luke is practically a proposition. Torres flings himself down in the snow and rolls, all four feet in the air. Soren stands over him and appears to consider it.

And when Ander comes back level with me I turn my head and drag my muzzle the whole length of his shoulder, deliberately, and push something warm and unmistakable down the new bond at the same time.

He breaks stride completely.

A golden wolf nearly going nose-first into the snow, and something coming back at me through that connection that is mostly outrage and a little do that again.

Torres turns in a great skidding arc to come and look at him, and I swear the black wolf is laughing.

Down at the gate, Jon has put the flask on the post and is standing with his forearms on the rail, watching all of it, and he's grinning at us.

Jon can't feel the bonds, but he came out here anyway, and he is having the time of his life.

We go around once more, easy. The ache sharpens on the last stretch, and I slow down and stop at the bottom of the slope. Torres is beside me immediately, nose at my shoulder, worried. Luke pulls up. Soren simply stands.

I'm fine. I'm just done.

We shift back and Jon passes around the flask. Warmth from the inside.

"Shoulder," he says, when I reach for a drink.

"Aching. It got stronger on the last lap, so I stopped. That's me telling you out loud, so Bergström won’t yell."

"Noted, and I'll tell her that she asks me, which she will." He pours something hot into a cup and puts it in my hand. "How was it?"

"I don't have words for it."

"You don't need any," Jon says. He's still smiling. "Stop for a minute before you walk back."

Torres flops in the snow at my feet with his hair in every direction. "I won."

"You didn't win. There wasn't a race."

"There was a race," Luke says.