Chapter Twenty-six
The grey people have done their work after all. I give them thanks for they at least can hear me. She left no sound, no scent to follow, nothing. It was as if she’d been swallowed up by the earth. I’d never have found her without them.
She is surrounded by a gathering of the strange creatures; more join her every moment. The wolf in me is disturbed, they smell so wrong: I am enchanted. I never knew such shadow things existed until I became a shadow myself.
The perfume of the penumbral kingdom clings to Trista honey-sweet and lemon-sharp in this country without lemons. It almost masks the musk and spiciness that is her own unique scent. She looks different too, straighter and less scrawny, no longer weary but strong and lithe. Her hair is longer and curls around her face, bright as the flames she conjures, and I long for fingers to tuck it out of her way.
I want to run to her, but I can’t. I am as bound by duty as a wolf as I was as a legionary. My she-wolf needs me and she has no one but me. She is an outcast thanks to me and likely to remain so. She bears the taint of my unnatural scent wherever she goes. She carries our pups. What kind of creature, man or beast, abandons a female in such condition? I watch Trista go, wishing I could explain. The wolf can only twitch his ears and drop his tail and that she cannot understand.
Why doesn’t her presence make me change? Finding her again should transform me as it has before yet my paws remain inflexible, clawed, fur-covered, not hands. My mouth is still an animal’s maw, good for biting and tearing and shredding, useless for talking. Useless for kissing. Oh, Trista! I was so busy cursing my condition I forgot to be grateful for ever being a man at all. May the gods of this place forgive me if I offended them.
I follow her, keeping a safe distance between us. The camped men have dogs and I have no desire to kill them if they are set on me. She’s lost her armour and her weapons and I don’t like to see her enter the place of many men without either. There is danger there. There is blood in the air and the promise of more.
The rain brings out the stench of the not long buried dead and the bitter tang of war is on my tongue. I don’t need her gift of prophecy to know what is to come.
The armies are amassing. The men of steel will fight the men of bone and all of the shadow world holds its breath, waiting to know the outcome. I’ll gladly fight with the bone men, the tribespeople, with Trista, but I doubt they’ll let me close enough to fight.
My poor she-wolf is weary and fearful. I’ve dragged her where she doesn’t belong to follow Trista whom she doesn’t trust. I must find her a place to rest now that dawn is nearly here. She is worthy of something better than a half-wolf, but the only wolf she wants is me.