Page 84 of Moonless

I step closer anyway.

“Why? Why are you doing all of this?”

Chapter 22

“Because your people let mine die!”

It comes out a roar. She had her mouth open to keep going, and she shuts it. She asked. She can have all of it.

“You want to know what happened? You want something you can understand?” I fling my arms out, claws spread, and the sack bangs against my hip. “My father went to them! He stood at their door and asked them for help, and they sent him away!”

I can’t stand still. I get as far as the passage and turn, and my claws drag white lines down the wall on the way around.

“They knew! He stood there and told them what was happening to us, and they knew, and they sent him away. His name was Ilmari. He was our alpha, and he went to wolves and he asked. You are an alpha’s sister. You know what that costs!”

Perkele. Now she has his name. She’s turning to keep me in front of her, one fist still bunched in the shirt at her hip.

“You wanted to go to them. You still do. So did he, and I stood beside him while he did it!”

I come back across the chamber until I’m right in front of her. She has to tip her head back to look at me, and she does it without giving up a step. Small as she is. I can smell my smoke on her.

I shove my bad arm up between us, and the dried blood pulls at the fur.

“Look at it! This is what was on their weapons. The hunters were already killing us. They’d leave wounded animals near our dens and wait. It seemed an easy meal, and somebody always went for it. I saw our people carried home dead. After a while some of them never came home at all.”

She looks at my arm, then at me, and I let it drop.

“So he took me to the wolves. He asked them to let us bring our people somewhere the hunters had not found.”

I have to stop and take a deep breath, and my ribs shake with it.

“I stood at their door beside him, with his hand here.”

I reach back for the spot between my shoulders, but I can’t get my arm that high. Hitto.

“The one at the door shook his head before my father finished. Then he told him the hunters would follow. ‘We have kept this place hidden. We will not have you bringing them here.’”

My upper lip catches on a fang, and I pull it free.

“Say something for them.”

She keeps her eyes on me, her bad arm tucked against her ribs, and says nothing. She can’t.

“That is what they chose to keep safe. Their door. And you want to know why I will not let them through mine?”

It takes the last of my air. I ran the forest twice today with her on my back, and my chest hasn’t caught up.

Kestria swallows, and I hear it stick. She shouted herself raw at me.

The light from the vent’s almost gone. I can still see her eyes.

“He didn’t say a word the whole way home. I kept waiting for him to tell me where we’d go instead.”

My legs start to shake, so I put a hand on the hearthstone. Not now. The sack knocks against the edge.

“You asked about the new moon. That’s when we’re weak. Slow. Sick in our legs before we’ve even tried to use them. That’s the night the men came. They knew when to do it. They’d been hunting us on those nights.”

I try to straighten up off the stone, but my legs won’t have it, so I sit. She stays where she is while I get my hands onto my knees.