Page 55 of Ravaged Wolf
TREVOR
I immediately fuck things up,and I have no idea how, but I don’t ask Izzy to tell me what happened. That absolutely feels like the wrong move. One second, we were talking, and the next, she turned white as a sheet and clammed up. It felt like a knife in my belly, but I breathed through it and distracted myself by looking for interesting things to show her. I don’t dare open the bond, so I end up narrating our walk back like the world’s worst trail guide.
“Spiderweb over there. Big one.”
“Woodpecker hole.”
“Oops. Someone lost a tire.”
“Butterfly on that milkweed. Nope. That’s a moth. Moth on that milkweed.”
She does let me hold her hand, but she won’t let me carry her. It’s slow going, and her feet are obviously hurting by the time we got to the cottage where we’d left our clothes.
“Soda can popped,” I point out. The dented can is laying empty by her abandoned shoes. She hums politely like she did with the spiderweb, the woodpecker, and the moth.
Her wolf is a tiny critter, so her shirt and pants are fine, but my beast busted through the seams of my jeans, so Ihave to stroll into the den shirtless in my boxer briefs. Luckily, the elastic stretched instead of ripped.
Everyone’s eyes are on us when we get back. Old Den shifters do not believe in discretion. At Salt Mountain, if something didn’t concern you, you had better keep your nose out of it. At Moon Lake, at least among the ranked wolves, it’s bad manners to let on that you’re snooping. At Old Den, there’s no such thing as other people’s business. Drama is shared as freely as the pool, the food, and the workload.
Izzy tenses as we enter the gauntlet, but she holds her head high.
“There’s my boy,” Granddad Cameron calls out when we pass. “Worried I was going to have to come after you.” He cackles, and the elders he’s sitting with crack up, too.
He’s got his cup of water with a straw close at hand and someone brushed his hair. Good. Back at Salt Mountain, if I didn’t get him straight in the morning, it might be lunchtime before one of the females had time to tend to him.
Here, work seems more haphazard in that there aren’t bosses or a starting bell or things like that, but still, things that need doing are more likely to get done in a timely fashion. Everything is everyone’s responsibility, and instead of no one doing it, like what would happen in another pack, shit just gets done quicker. I can’t explain it. I didn’t think our nature worked like that.
“Did you get lost?” Pritchard asks as he passes me on the way out, carrying a full laundry basket on each shoulder.
“Moss grows on the north side of the tree,” Irv Nevitts adds, clapping me on the back. He’s following Pritchard with a bottle of detergent. Not sure why Pritchard has to carry two baskets while Irv carries the detergent. No. Strike that. I know why. Pritchard lost a bet.
“Sun rises in the east,” Conway Kemble volunteers.
“Sets in the west,” that little shit Danny pipes in.
When our group of evacuees arrived from Salt Mountain, most of us were honorarily adopted into the scavenger faction, but I guess because I was ranked at Moon Lake, I’m considered a nob, so I regularly get my balls busted. I glance over at Izzy to see if she’s bothered, but she’s not getting tenser or redder in the face, although that might be because it’s not possible. She’s pretty tense and red.
When we’re almost to the relatively empty far side of the den, we walk past Drona and Rae, two of Rosie’s relatives, and they whistle at me.
“Fine catch you’ve got there, Owens,” Drona says. “You could bounce a quarter off that ass.”
“A keeper,” Rae adds. “Don’t let that one slip off your line.”
Izzy squeezes my hand tighter, and for a split second, I think things are going to be okay. It got awkward and weird, maybe even bad for a while, but she’s squeezing my hand, so we’re still in this.
And then she mumbles something and flees down the corridor to the female dorm.
“Oh, sorry, Trev,” Drona says.
“We didn’t mean to embarrass her,” Rae comes closer. “Should I go talk to her?”
“No. It’s not on you. It’s on me.”
Rae doesn’t seem convinced, but she pats me on the forearm, and leaves me staring down the tunnel where Izzy disappeared.
I don’t know what to do. My wolf is howling for our skin. He sees no reason he can’t bust into the warren where she’s holed up and make himself at home until she deigns to pay attention to us again. He’s been taking lessons from Pritchard.
There was a book Mom read us when we were kidsthat had a bunch of animals who did jobs and drove weird vehicles, like the worm drove an apple and the gorilla drove a banana. Anyway, on each page of the book, there was a yellow bug for you to find. That’s Pritchard. If Nia’s around, look long enough, you’ll find Pritchard. Or his wolf.
