Page 19 of Veradel
Lucan huffs beneath me, unconvinced.We’ll just watch for now. You stay on me and keep warm.
Nodding my understanding, I bury myself deeper into his fur and peer ahead, waiting for something to happen. Beside us, Vivian, Merrick, and Soren are utterly still, their coats camouflaging into the scenery around us. A twig snaps from somewhere ahead. Branches rustle.
And then it steps into view.
A creature unlike anything I’ve seen before, not quite the size of Lucan but still huge and majestic, with antlers curling into the air like the branches of a tree and four strong legs that end in hooves. Elk. For some reason, my throat squeezes at the realization that this here is like all the animals I’ve eaten my whole life, always consuming without everknowing.
Now, I know, though. And when the three other werewolves streak past us to pounce on it, I don’t stop my tears from falling at the reverberating thud it makes as it falls, too. The way the sound follows the elk’s barking wail of alarm that cuts off abruptly when Soren closes long canines around the animal’s throat.
Instantly, jets of the elk’s blood soak the pine needles baked into the ground. Lucan shifts beneath me as sharp hunger clamps my stomach, but the thought of eating its actual flesh roils in my stomach and makes my head spin again.
Are you okay?he asks me.
Fine.I gulp.I just think… maybe I need a minute before I eat this kind of breakfast.
I can feel the flicker of unease that passes between the four of them. Just as quickly, Lucan’s mental presence seems to lift up walls around just himand me, so that the others are blocked out. I’d ask him how he does it if my stomach wasn’t roiling.You don’t have to eat the elk, Saskia. We can always find something else.
No, it’s not that.I tighten my grip on his fur, desperately hoping I don’t sound ungrateful.I don’t… know, exactly. Maybe I just need something a little lighter.
Lucan’s concern ripples into my mind.I know a spot where there’s a huge patch of blackberries just a few more minutes uphill. Would that—
Yes,I answer immediately. The thought of rich, dark juice bursting in my mouth rather than the meat of a dead animal… it sounds infinitely better at the moment.
Lucan tears down the mental walls around us long enough to command the others,Take the elk back home. Prepare it for tonight. I’m going to take Saskia a little further up.
He shutters them out before they can respond, and we’re racing uphill again, just me and him, past the gory scene, over a creek, and into a balder spot of the mountain where the pine trees stand spaced apart from each other like lonely statues. Thorny brambles grow in hordes between them, though, and the air swells with a sweetness as my eyes land on all the clusters of berries hanging from their stems.
I slide off Lucan and lunge for them, my stomach grumbling again. Lucan’s chuckle rumbles through me for a moment before the connection between us snaps as he shifts back into his human form and comes up behind me, watching me eat with a curious tilt of his head.
“What?” I demand, whirling toward him, knowing my lips are probably already stained dark blue. “You fucked all the energy out of me last night.”
“And you,” he says, drifting closer and swiping a thumb along my chin, collecting a drop of juice, “are remarkably good at using curse words for someone who’s just learned them.”
“What can I say?” I shrug and pluck another blackberry from its stem, popping it into my mouth. “I’m a fast learner.”
I’m glad Lucan can’t read my mind right now, because behind the smiling shape of my lips, part of my chest is caving in at how right all of this feels—well, besides the dead elk. But thepack. The way they’re all connected. The way they live, so wild and free and in houses that actually feel like homes. I wish I could truly be a part of it, but I’ll never be ableto run as fast as them, or hunt something like them, or shift like them, no matter how fast of a learner I try to be.
“It’s hard to remember,” I continue, turning to view the landscape around us, “the Guardians and what they do to the people in there when you’re outhere. I don’t know how you always remembered us.” I turn toward him, a pinch of admiration twisting my heart. “How you kept fighting for us when everything is so perfect outside the Wall.”
Lucan’s amber gaze dips from my eyes to my mouth before flitting back up, contemplative. “There’s a place at the top of this mountain, actually, where I go whenever I need a reminder. It’s the highest point you can get—even higher than the Wall. High enough to see all of Xantera.”
My mouth drops open, and I glance upward. “Really? Can you… can you show me?”
I know, realistically, that I won’t be able to see individual people from such a great distance away. Not Malcolm or Gaia, and certainly not Eleni or Claudia trapped within the palace. But even just viewing my old prison from above might help me remember that my fellow humans are trapped, dying, and aren’t even aware of it. That we still need to find a way to tear down that wretched Wall. That my mother deserves all the vengeance in the world.
“Of course,” Lucan says, his expression inscrutable as he studies me. “Remember, whatever you ask of me…”
Ten minutes later, he’s depositing me onto a rounded crown of icy snow, barren of trees but circled by slick black boulders. It truly does seem like the top of the world, because when I sweep my gaze all around me, I can see the rise and fall of the terrain in every direction, silver strings of sparkling water winding among the ravines, and the circular disruption of the land that is Lucan’s stolen kingdom.
And when I squint over the spikes of the Wall…
Even with my human eyes, I can see the bustling dots of people in the streets—not walking in orderly fashion like normal, but swarming, converging like ants attacking each other. Even though I can’t hear them, I swear the wind carries a faint note of screaming.
And flames—those areflames, licking toward the sky from various buildings.
“Xantera,” I gasp as Lucan goes stone-still beside me. But I can’t get the rest of the words out, because I don’t know if it means hope or thedestruction of everyone in that city. All I know is that Claudia and Eleni must have succeeded in getting incriminating evidence onto everyone’s screens in their housing units.
The people of Xantera are rioting.
