Page 92

CHAPTER 91

I WAKE JUST as the sun is peeking over the mountains. For a few minutes I don’t move except to snuggle deeper into my sleeping bag. Beside me, Holo snores softly. On the other side of him, Wendy breathes slow and steady.

Even at this elevation, it’s cozy in our lean-to. But then again, it’s still summer. Soon we’ll have to think more seriously about how to keep ourselves warm and fed. But for now we’re enjoying the long, warm days and the cool, star-filled nights.

I stretch my arms, wiggle my fingers and toes, and then I get up to get the fire going. A silvery mist hangs over the lake. Every once in a while I hear the splash of a jumping fish.

Aka breakfast .

We have actual fishing poles now. Lightweight sleeping bags, too, water filters, headlamps, first aid kits, and even a tiny propane camp stove. It’s useful gear, but it’s also a disguise: We look like backpackers instead of runaways.

During the three hellish months Holo and I spent in Brookside, Wendy worked as a gardener in Ashton, getting paid under the table and saving every penny she made. Small-town squirrels made for easy hunting, she said, and people never locked up their henhouses.

By the time we escaped, Wendy had more money than any of us had ever seen. Between that and a few visits to unattended campsites (sorry, not sorry), we fully outfitted ourselves for adventure.

And by adventure, of course, I mean spending the rest of our lives on the run.

I know it didn’t have to be this way. I know that every single messed-up thing that happened to us was my fault. If I hadn’t coaxed Holo out of the woods, we’d still be in that little cabin, with ourselves and the wolves for company.

But we also would have never known what it was like to make a friend, or fly over the treetops. We would have never tasted a milkshake. I would have never had my first kiss.

So was it all a big mistake?

I don’t know the answer to that question right now, and I’m not sure I ever will. What I do know is that the sun is getting higher in the sky, and my stomach is growling, and there is my human family to feed—and my wolf family to find.

Ahh-wooooooo!!