Page 37 of Ravaged Wolf
“No, Mama,” he says adamantly. “Daddy says you don’t carry. Remember?”
“Oh.” Una flushes and shoots me a glance. “Killian’s always telling him to take care of me.” She smacks a kiss on Raff’s forehead. “Thank you, baby, but this is glass. Mommy carries glass.”
“Daddy says no,” Raff repeats, and he leaves off trying to take the dragon’s tongue, but by his tone, he thinks Una will regret her choices. He has “just wait ’til Daddy finds out” written on his face.
Una sighs and calls, “Lucan?” The snaggle-toothed male trots over and grabs the jar. “Happy?” she asks her son.
He smacks a kiss on her cheek and smiles. “Good Mommy.”
The Kellys show me all around their territory—the beehives, a greenhouse with a mysterious locked back room,and the terraced garden where they grow the flowers and herbs for the potpourri, perfumes, and lotions that they sell at their store in the local human town.Andto ship internationally, Una tells me with obvious pride.
After the tour, we have lunch, and then sit on her porch and sip sun tea that she brews herself. Her pups play with their friends in the grassy commons in front of her cabin, and it feels like a summer camp you’d see in a TV show or movie, complete with the gnats and crickets. Time feels slower, but not in a bad way. I thought being away from pack territory would be nerve-racking, but this is the most relaxed I’ve felt in years.
“Any news about Cadoc?” she asks after we’ve polished off a few lemon cookies. “He trained here a few years back, not long after Killian and I mated. We were surprised when he broke with Moon Lake. He seemed like a very” —her nose wrinkles as she searches for a word—“straitlaced male. He certainly didn’t seem like the type to lead a rebellion.”
Straitlaced is an understatement. He’s quite a bit younger than me, but he never seemedyoung. At the Academy, he was always the voice of authority, even before his wolf came.
“I guess you never know about a person,” I say.
Una hums in agreement.
“Old Den is doing well,” I tell her. “Apparently, they’re overflowing the actual dens, so they’re doing a lot of construction.”
When Cadoc first led the scavengers out of Moon Lake, there was no communication between the packs, and there was talk of war, but then Madog came back from the mysterious mission that had taken him away when the fight between Cadoc and Alban Hughes went down.
Slowly but surely, Madog has been putting things to rights, and now a few council members have madediplomatic trips to Old Den. They issue official statements afterward, but the good tea comes from the folks they take with them.
“They’ve been taking refugees from Salt Mountain. Males as well as females.”
Una rounds her eyes. “Really?”
I nod. It’s extremely unusual for a pack to accept a male from another pack. I didn’t believe it myself at first, but we’ve heard the stories a few times now.
“We haven’t been to Old Den in a while. There was a bit of an—shall we sayincident—last time we traveled, so Killian’s put a moratorium on me leaving pack territory.”
“An incident at Old Den?”
She shakes her head. “No. North Border.”
I really want to ask what happened, but even though Una feels like a normal, everyday female, like a person who I would’ve been friends with at work or the Academy, the hulking, hard-faced males posted about a yard away in every direction don’t let me forget that she’s an alpha female, and I’m not going to pry into an alpha female’s business.
My brain searches for a change of topic, and for some reason, it returns to Old Den.
And how Old Den has taken in males from Salt Mountain.
Why would a male leave his pack?
Because he was exiled?
Even though I’m sitting in a rocking chair, I feel the strange sensation of wind at my back again, like I did the day I ended up in nursing aide orientation.
A question pops out of my mouth. “When you visited Old Den, did you meet a male my age named Trevor?”
My throat constricts the instant the name leaves my mouth. I haven’t said it aloud in five years.
Inside my chest, my wolf cracks an eye open as if she wasn’t dead to the world a second ago.
Una’s forehead scrunches. “You know what—yeah. Last time we were at Old Den, Cadoc was showing off this pump they’ve installed to improve plumbing—apparently it was a big deal—and he introduced the males working on the project. One was named Trevor. He was really reserved. The only reason I noticed him was because while the rest of us were talking, he was making sure an old male in a rocking chair drank his water. That’s what made me remember him. It was funny to me that they’d dragged a rocking chair out to a worksite so they could keep an eye on an elder. I thought it was sweet.”
