Page 4 of Moonless

Keer stops beside us with one black paw planted near my nose, and through the bond comes the path ahead, followed by firm impatience.

I give him a picture of his son standing on my ribs. Such a mighty hunter. Surely we should let him enjoy his victory.

My brother looks down at me with his one gold eye.

Fine. He’s had a whole five breaths of victory.

I ease upright, depositing Eskan in a heap against Birdie, while Colm steps neatly out of reach and waits for the other two. He’s going to spend years doing that.

We set off again with Keer on my right and the pups between us. Cool wind gets under the fur along my neck, and I stretch into it, paws finding the firm places between roots without needing to look down. A squirrel scrabbles high above us, and farther ahead water trickles over stone. I could keep going until supper.

The pups’ pleasure flickers faintly through the bond as they run. Eskan’s comes strongest when he edges past my nose. Colm’s wavers when Birdie falls behind, then settles when she catches us. They can’t choose what they send yet. That won’t come until they’re nearly grown, along with the ability to send anything useful.

For now, I get a great deal of excitement about sticks.

Most of the pack barely feel them, but they’re my blood, so their small, warm presences reach me more clearly, and Keer feels them better still. I brush his steadiness through the bond while he noses Colm away from a muddy hollow.

The bond’s never done words, which is a shame, because he’s being ridiculous. Feelings get through, and in these bodies, pictures.

So I send him the mud, with three perfectly clear sets of small pawprints through it.

His answer is a flash of Mel at the dwelling door.

An excellent objection. She’d make us wash them.

I shoulder Birdie back onto dry ground, and Keer’s satisfaction annoys me enough to nip his leg. He bumps me sideways without breaking stride.

Beyond him, the others are spread through the forest and back toward home. Axan’s familiar presence is there when I reach for it, the same as always, along with the quieter touch of packmates at work. I leave them to it and chase Eskan around the next tree. Today I have three extra reasons to keep turning back.

Eskan lowers his nose and veers toward a gap in the bracken.

I smell the blood just before he gets there.

I cut across his path, planting my forelegs in front of him, and he runs into my shoulder and protests with a squeak. Keer is beside me immediately, pushing the other two back with his chest.

Blood coats the crushed stems beyond the gap. More has soaked into the earth beneath them, dark and wet where a heavy body dragged through. Bear. I lift my nose, following the scent uphill.

Human sweat comes with it, and iron that isn’t blood. There’s a bitter trace underneath, too faint to separate cleanly. Moonbright, possibly.

Shit. I move along the edge, keeping my paws out of the marks.

A boot has pressed deep into the mud. Beside it sits a wolf print, the toes spread under its weight. I follow them with my eyes to the next pair, then the next.

Both have the same softening edges, and water has collected in each without a leaf caught on the surface. After the rain, then, and together.

The wolf tracks keep beside the boots all the way up the slope. Nobody was running, and the wolves weren’t trailing behind later to sniff what the humans left.

They walked together.

What the hell.

I lower my nose toward a fern brushed by one of them, and beneath the bear blood is wolf scent, unfamiliar enough that I try the next frond. It belongs to another pack, but I can’t place it. Who are you?

Keer has gone still behind me.

I glance back, and his ears are forward, his eye fixed on the same fern. Then his attention moves along the trail, past the last prints I can see.

I send him the paired tracks and a sharp question in feeling.