“Are they still following?” she would ask.
Shan would just nod and say nothing more.
Maldrine wasn’t the kind to give up. Flint-eyes, Shan called him. Apt enough, but flint-heart might suit him better. He lived for Gilliad and the associated power his friendship endowed. She had watched the reflection of Maldrine’s innate cruelty grow in her brother over the years until it had blossomed into outright madness. The things they had done to Haledren…
Day after day, she wrestled with the need to tell Shan what she knew of his friend. But that would mean burdening him with the story of Haledren’s capture, torture and demise. It would mean telling him what Haledren had become. And worst of all, it would mean telling Shan her identity. And she couldn’t do that. Even a mention of Gilliad brought such a hatred into his silver eyes that they gleamed as sharp as his sword. Maldrine’s gift to her brother haunted her, and a knot grew in her stomach, a cancer that threatened every moment with Shan. If he hated Gilliad now, how would he feel if he learned the fate of the man he sought. And what would he do to her if he knew she was Gilliad’s sister.
Shan smiled sometimes. Jeren even heard him laughing again. Admittedly, it was usually at her as she tumbled into the snow or tripped over her own feet while he drilled her in fighting techniques. He remained withdrawn, reluctant to engage her in much more than confrontation since she’d persuaded him to teach her something. He talked to the wolf more than he did to her.
But at least when he did talk to her his tone was kinder. Sometimes he smiled and she loved to see him then, his eyes bright with joy, transforming his sombre expression to something so handsome that it stopped her breath.
She could look at him forever in those moments.
And then some thought would snatch that from him and he would withdraw into himself, excluding her once again.
In spite of that, Jeren had never felt more alive. How could she compare this to her life in River Holt?
Each morning she awoke with the dawn. Shan immediately set about packing up their meagre belongings and had them underway, Anala trudging alongside them and only the sound of snow crunching beneath their feet to accompany them. They didn’t talk much. They didn’t need to.
Each day Shan taught her to fight. It wasn’t as if there was a given time, or a particular arena. They sparred as they walked. He called it the Dance, but it was only when she watched the way he moved that she understood why. His body became liquid, graceful, drifting from one position to the next. Sometimes it seemed that she watched him in slow motion, and it was only then that she managed to dance alongside him, when she felt that she too became part of the Dance.
Jeren found everything exhilarating. At times like this she came to think they couldn’t be caught, not now. With Shan at her side, she could be as free as this forever.
Each day they walked, and fought. Each evening he hunted with Anala, running through the snow, fleet and silent shadows. Each night they slept side by side for warmth and safety. Jeren huddled in against him, forcing her breath to be slow and calm, fearing that he would hear how her heart pounded. But he never made an untoward gesture, nor anything to indicate that he felt as she did, that there was anything like affection growing between them.
Twilight stretched long into the evenings in the north. The long shadows picked their way across the rocks and snow, between the trees and the thorny shrubs. Jeren carefully laid the fire as Shan had shown her, clearing off the snow, ringing it with scavenged stones, using only old wood and keeping it low so the smoke and flames wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. The higher wall of stones behind it blocked the light and reflected the heat back on her. They may have shaken off their pursuers for now, but there was no need to give them a beacon to follow should they stumble into view.
Sheltered by the tent behind her, wrapped in a blanket, Jeren let the warmth of the fire seep into her. For once, she had done it right. Even he couldn’t give it that scathing look he had used too often. Not this time. Satisfied that when the Fair One returned, he would find a crackling fire ready to cook whatever he had caught, she allowed herself to doze.
Anala would probably still complain, but then she always did. The old Jeren would have laughed at the idea that a wolf could complain about anything, but Anala had a way of making her displeasure completely apparent. Shan had tried to explain about wolves, about their hierarchy and the social structure of a pack. It appalled Jeren to discover that Anala considered her a lesser female, weak and submissive, not really worth her attention, someone to be minded and cared for, like a child.
“It could be worse,” Shan had said, struggling not to smile at her outrage.
“It is not funny!” she told him, glaring at the wolf. Anala gave her a disdainful look in return.
“If she thought you were a threat, she’d attack you. She thinks we’re a pack, the three of us, and as she was here first that makes her the lead female.”
Shan reached out without thinking, his hand stroking her hair. Jeren stilled beneath his touch and gazed up into his perfect face. Then came the moment when he realised what he was doing and pulled back, cutting her off, turning his back on her.
Anala had circled them and flopped down beside Shan, making a questioning noise deep in her throat. He had reached out to scratch her behind the ears instead.
“We should move on,” he had said.
Jeren’s eyes stung as she thought of that sudden coldness he raised between them like a shield, whenever it looked like, just for a moment, he felt as she felt. But he always found a way to make ice clamp around her heart, to remind her that she was different from him in every way—human, magic user, weak and useless. She drew the blanket further around her body, cold now despite the fire, as night closed in around her.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. A shape moved around the edge of the camp, sleek and smooth, as if a shadow had broken off from the rest and circled back towards the sunset’s last glimmering. Jeren followed its path through eyes still half-closed but now fully alert, and her heart thudded a little harder within her frozen chest. Instincts she had never had a need for rose within her, every nerve vibrating with a primal alarm.
Wolf.
She saw it now, its pelt black. It stood twice the size of Anala and its breath plumed the frigid air. Glittering eyes watched her.
They smell fear, she warned herself, trying to remain calm.
The black wolf sniffed the air and then stepped closer, padding across the snow. It lifted its head, ears alert, and snarled at her. Jeren flinched back.
Another growl shook the air. Anala slipped from the shadows between the trees, her silver fur gleaming like moonlight as she reached Jeren’s side. Jeren could smell its odour rising in the air. She reached out a hand—slowly, so slowly—and burrowed her fingers into Anala’s pelt. Her coat felt damp.
The black wolf advanced on them again, a male, unthreatened by these two females, so much smaller than himself. Jeren studied it, seeking a weakness, a way to defeat it and noting its ragged appearance as it drew closer. Despite its size and obvious power, she could pick out the lines of its ribs, could see the matting in its bristled fur.
This wolf had no pack. It operated alone, a rogue.
Anala growled again, a second warning, and her fur bristled beneath Jeren’s touch. A rumble of thunder, an echo of that same growl, ran through her fingertips and all the way up her arm.
A lead wolf senses a threat to her pack, Shan had informed her. And nothing threatened a pack more than one of its own gone rogue. In the black wolf, Jeren recognised the same hunger she had seen in Gilliad’s eyes: ravenous, unending, a hunger that could not be assuaged. The desire to maim, to kill without reason, to attack anything that moved.