Page 10 of Moonless

My voice drops on the title, exactly where his did. Every month, the same drop, and the small lift after it into the next name.

I work through the dens in order, family after family, a stone set down on the floor after each one, until my throat needs wetting. I swallow and continue, hands resting open beside my knees.

Some names belong to people I only met once. I remember their faces as clearly as the ones I saw every day. Where I know how someone died, I say that too. The rest only get the name. It’s what I have.

“Tuuli.”

I was there when we buried my mother, before the hunters came. My father stood beside me while the earth went over her. Hers is the one grave where I know who lies underneath.

“Ilmari, alpha.”

I still hear his last order. Run.

The older voices give way to names I used to hear called across the den. I speak them as Väinö required, even the children who’d only answer to a shortened version. My knees ache against the floor, but there’s still a stretch to finish.

“Jouni.”

I take air for the next name, and it doesn’t come.

My tongue rests against the back of my teeth. Then I speak the next one, and the one after.

The children get younger. There are names here that their owners never learned to say, and I pronounce each one in full.

“Lumi.”

The newest-born of my den is the last of them.

Then the heir answers with his own name, and the line goes on. Mine. I’m alive, so I don’t say it. I wait the length of it anyway.

River-cold air moves over my hands, carrying blood through the stone vents.

Wolf scent comes with it, and my ears go flat. Bitter moonbright, and under both, human blood. All three belong to one body.

The growl starts low in my chest and doesn’t get past my fangs. I know the scent of wolves. I’ve had two hundred years to remember it.

The blood comes from far below the den, down by the river.

Not my trouble.

I’m standing before the next breath.

Chapter 3

A bolt is coming straight at my chest.

I throw my weight sideways, and it strikes the tree behind me. Bark catches in my fur as I scramble past the trunk.

The man in the clearing turns toward the sound. His crossbow is still hanging at his side.

Someone else fired.

I dig my claws into the slope and run.

The bear-blood trail went over a ridge I hadn’t meant to cross. Then another turn, with fresh blood on the leaves ahead. I kept following.

A branch cracks to my right, and I veer left.

The Warden was standing in the open when I reached the clearing. I didn’t know his face. He was watching the trees beyond me, his thumb resting against the stock of his crossbow.