Page 71 of Moonless

She tries to turn uphill, but he gets his claws into her hind leg and drags her under him. The tawny wolf lets go of his calf and jumps for his side.

Its teeth close on the pale fur above his hip. I see a little broken wrapping stuck beside its mouth when he tears it off.

He doesn’t even cover the wound. He hauls the wolf against him, gets its throat between his fangs, and bites.

I’ve done that. I’ve had a throat in my teeth until it quit kicking, but I had a wolf’s jaws for it. He’s doing it with a man’s face.

I grip the bow with both hands while blood spatters the ground.

The wolf falls beside the first body. Rauk turns back to the female, catching her shoulders as she scrambles through the broken branches.

He lifts her clear of the ground, and I can’t get a full breath.

“Stop! She can tell us who sent them!”

His hands keep moving.

“Leave her alive!”

There’s a crack, and the female’s legs hang loose. He throws her down beside the trunk. He didn’t even hear me.

The gray male’s head lies at the wrong angle. The tawny wolf isn’t moving. I look from one to the other, waiting for one of them to breathe.

Rauk stands over them with blood on his mouth, his left arm hanging low and the fur soaked from elbow to wrist. He’s breathing hard, and then his head turns toward me.

His eyes are wide under that heavy brow, white showing all the way round the dark.

I take a step toward him.

He drops into a crouch, hands spread, claws cutting into the dirt.

Fuck. I’m walking toward him.

The bow’s hanging by my knee, and he’s looking at me the way he looked at them.

I should be walking the other way.

I put the bow down.

All right. Apparently we’re doing this.

I ease my right hand out where he can see it. He shifts toward me, and I stop mid-step. His eyes follow my hand.

Uh, okay, right. Where do I put it? Not the arm, that’s bleeding. Definitely not the mouth.

I reach for his chest.

He comes up from the crouch as my palm touches bare skin below his shoulder. A growl shakes against my hand.

“Rauk.”

His fingers close on empty air beside my sleeve.

He looks down at my hand, then up at my face. His ears lift a little, and he stays like that, close enough that his chest moves against my palm.

Then he jerks away.

I stumble when he goes. He’s already past the fallen trunk, driving through the branches toward the trees. A young pine bends under his shoulder and cracks.