The loss of part of my tattoo turned the hook in my gut from a suggestion into an imperative. Still, it took thirty endless hours to get permission from Vega to leave her territorial boundaries, hours that cut the prophecy deadline down to two days of leeway. The whole time, the instinct to travel north tugged at me while poetry ran through my head in an endless loop:
“Where the glyphs lie halved, null shall overlay,
“Sister matebrand formed on the fifty-second day.”
It left me wondering if something was happening to Celeste while my aunt demanded my attendance at packwide dinners. Would I lose more tattoo ink while engaging in what I knew to be busy work, and if so what did that mean for my connection to Orion?
As the sun set for the second time since we’d returned home, my aunt finally cut me loose. But there was still more heel-cooling to be gotten through. Because Orion had opted to meet after the moon rose at eleven, something I realized made rational sense but that still stuck in my craw like splinters of a rabbit bone insufficiently chewed with lupine teeth.
Yes, living among werewolves had taught me that we could travel twice as quickly if we didn’t have to pick our way through total darkness. And yes, lunar cycles marched to their own rhythm, each day a little different from the one that came before. Still, I wasn’t able to relax into further delay.
Finally, though, I left the lights of Vega’s village behind and stepped onto outpack desert. Instantly, electricity sparked through the pads of my paws and lifted my fur away from my skin. At the same time, a pair of wolves came into view running full bore toward me. The smaller one curved away after a moment, only the larger and more familiar figure slowing as he approached me head on.
Then Orion was human and naked, kneeling before me just like when we’d first met on the other side of this vast expanse of unclaimed land that made up the outpack. “You came alone?” he rumbled, his surprise evident. That wasn’t what we’d discussed.
I shifted and started to answer. But words caught in my throat as I noticed something off about Orion’s tattoo. I reached out to turn his arm over and, the moment my fingers made contact, his entire body twitched.
He wasn’t the only one affected. One square inch of skin-on-skin contact was enough to elevate my heart rate, to make the desert around us appear lighter as my pupils dilated as far as they could dilate. A shiver ran down my spine as Orion’s warm skin pressed against my fingertips. My mouth watered as the air between us thickened with the unmistakable aroma of cactus flowers.
I wanted to indulge in this connection. Wanted to ignore Orion’s pack mate, who was giving us space but was certainly close enough to witness something that felt deeply private. The memory of Orion’s arms around me lay hot in the air. That memory, and my wish to do more than we’d done up until this point…
But tonight wasn’t about public displays of affection. And we weren’t engaging in any real contact anyway due to the hovering threat of the matebrand rekindling.
So I merely stretched out Orion’s arm and tracked down the spot inside his elbow that matched the spot inside mine. His skin there was ink-free and also red, as if he’d been rubbing it. “The tattoo faded?” I asked.
Orion nodded. His gaze stuck on the identical spot on my arm, even though he made no move to touch it. His scent, I noted, had turned prickly. No longer cactus flowers but rather cactus thorns.
“You’re making up your mind,” he rumbled after a moment. “About the matebrand.”
It took me a moment to understand what he was talking about. “What? No!” The tattoos weren’t fading because I’d decided to permanently reject our partnership. “I recited the poem…prophecy…whatever. Bad idea in retrospect.”
Orion’s shrug let me off the hook, as did his sweetening scent. “We still have ink left,” he pointed out. “And time on the clock.”
He was right, yet I couldn’t fully relax. After all, losing part of our tattoos had to be linked to the looming deadline. By my count, two more sunrises would bring the prophesied sister matebrand, and I still had no idea what it was or how to prevent its formation.
“Any additional thoughts on Finnegan?” Orion continued.
I shook my head. Over the last day, it had become clear that Finnegan knew nothing about either the half-glyph or the stolen shifter children. Or at least nothing he was able to share with us. Certain questions shut him down the same way I tended to shut down when asked about my biological parents, and that similarity meant I didn’t push him when he was clearly hurting.
Still, his story seemed to hold together. He’d been raised by the Council, locked into a basement apartment that was all he’d ever known. His wonder at the broadness of the sky was palpable. His belongings, when I snuck into his room to go through them, consisted of well-made clothing, basic toiletries, an ereader stocked with thrillers, and nothing more.
No wallet, cash, or ID. No cell phone or other electronics capable of putting Finnegan in touch with the Council. And the way he sometimes mispronounced words or completely failed to read the room suggested he had indeed spent most of his life immersed in books or movies rather than interacting with real, live people.
I still wasn’t ready to trust him around Celeste, but I’d found no obvious red flags. “The guys are going to keep an eye on him while we’re gone,” I started.
Then another wolf loped up behind us. Hailey didn’t stop to chat, just met my gaze in passing. Her narrowed eyes reminded me of our conversation earlier that evening.
“I’ll come,” my friend had told me. “But let’s be smart about this. Vega doesn’t approve, so keep your nose clean.”
From the jerk of her chin now, I suspected delaying to chat with Orion didn’t equate to keeping my nose clean. Then Hailey was gone, arrowing deeper into the outpack.
Looked like conversation time was over. Orion hesitated only a moment before regaining fur then leading me and his pack mate along the same path Hailey had blazed.
As we traveled north through the desert, the ease of running alongside other wolves loosened my muscles. It didn’t hurt that Orion’s teenaged pack mate Ari frolicked like a puppy while Hailey, who had a tendency to focus only on the serious, wasn’t much more reserved.
Before long, Orion and I started playing also. Because the tug in my gut had loosened, providing direction but no time-sensitive urgency. The desert seemed to revel in our proximity rather than pushing us forward. And when we played, it joined in.
Together, Orion and I raced to the top of a hill to find a steep sand slope on the other side so free of rocks and prickles that I had a feeling the outpack had created it just for our enjoyment. We were being manipulated, but this kind of manipulation felt good to me.
To Orion also. He met my gaze, starlight twinkling in his eyes, and I couldn’t resist a yip of challenge. Without slowing, I hit the sand and slid…
We tumbled downhill side by side, out of control enough so his shoulder bumped into my shoulder. I knew, somehow, that Orion hadn’t intended to initiate the contact. That outpack magic was twisting the ground to force us closer together. But, for once, Orion didn’t flinch away. And I wasn’t about to put space between myself and his delicious scent.
A wind that hadn’t been present one moment earlier whipped sand into our fur, and I squinched my eyes shut, knowing without the need for a mate bond that Orion was doing the same thing beside me. Together, we rolled through pitch darkness that felt like the universe I often saw sparkling in Orion’s irises. Gradually, everything else became irrelevant. All that mattered was him, me, us.
At the bottom, we landed in a heap, my limbs twining through his limbs. I blinked away sand and found his lupine snout inches from my snout. The sky above us was luminous with a thousand stars.
Ever since breaking our mate bond, Orion had been so careful not to touch me. But now, his tongue rasped grit away from my face. Heat pressed through his fur and my fur, making each inhale more expansive than the last one. I felt, for the first time in a month, like I could properly breathe.
Then a howl cut through the darkness off to our right. That was Hailey. Another howl—Ari? After that came a cascade of vocalizations from wolves I couldn’t identify.
The moment was broken.
I rose and shook sand out of my fur, eyes squeezing shut momentarily. And when I blinked them back open, space had reasserted itself between me and Orion. Even more space than had been there before.
Chapter 7
Despite remembering our reasons to stay apart, we still managed to move in tandem as we sprinted in the direction of the howls. Zings of magic dogged our footsteps, the sensation like built-up static electricity releasing its power with every paw strike. Ignoring the minor shocks that resulted, I stretched my legs as best I could to match Orion’s naturally longer stride, staying even with him as we crested another small rise.
