Page 70 of Moonless

“There. Now the tree’s in trouble.”

One fang shows as he looks down at me.

The next shot grazes the edge of the pale wood, close enough that I want another one right now. “Again.”

Rauk gets halfway to the trunk and stops.

His ears turn uphill. I look where he’s looking, but there’s only a stand of young pines beyond the fallen branches, and I can’t hear a thing over the river.

He steps back toward me and puts himself between me and the trees.

“Behind me.”

I lower the bow. “What is it?”

“Wolves.”

I should’ve smelled them while they were still coming down the slope. Instead I’m standing here staring at empty trees. Useless.

Rauk growls, loud enough that I take my eyes off the pines.

His ears are flat, fangs bared, and he’s standing with his feet apart and his hands open. I’ve called him everything I could think of, and he never looked like this.

“They are on my ground.”

He isn’t talking to me.

The first wolf comes through the pines with two more behind it.

I don’t know any of them. The front one’s a broad gray male, with a dark female on his left and a smaller tawny wolf close behind. They stop at the edge of the fallen branches.

Mine wouldn’t just stand there staring at me.

The gray male’s got something caught in his back teeth, a small wrapped lump pushing out the side of his mouth.

Rauk takes one step uphill, then he’s on them.

The female darts around his left while the gray wolf comes straight at him, and the tawny one follows low to the ground.

I back toward the trunk with the bow raised, but Rauk’s in the way of every shot. Move.

He catches the gray wolf by the throat. The female ducks under his other hand and bites his left forearm, and he rocks back toward me.

She’s got a packet too. It splits when her jaws close, and dark purple pulp squeezes out over his forearm and into the blood.

The bitter smell reaches me when he wrenches his arm free.

Moonbright.

They’re carrying poison in their mouths. What the fuck are they doing?

Rauk slams the gray wolf down hard enough to shake the loose branches at my feet. It’s already limp, and he lifts it and slams it down again.

He pinned me with those hands on the full moon, and I thought he was being rough.

The tawny one fastens onto his leg, and he reaches for it without even looking down.

The female backs away, so he drops the gray body and goes after her. He’s roaring now, and his ears haven’t come round to me once. They always do.