23
Cold Moon
C ool white light fills the forest, the Moon illuminating the night. My breath plumes out in great big clouds of fog, trailing behind me as Jay leads the Pack around the edges of the forest. He doesn't darken the deep depths of the woods, but we run far and wide. The Pack covers as much of the forest as we can, howling into the cold night.
Jay is to my right, Dante is on the Alpha's other side, and Saint brackets me in on my left. Together, we run through the Hollow, over hills, and down the gorge.
I don't know when it happened, but at some point, I wind up leading the Pack through the Hollow, Jay right on my tail, the boys behind him, and then the rest of the Pack follow. If I were to look behind, I would see the Pack thundering through the forest. I don't need to, though; I can hear them.
Far too early, members begin turning back towards the Packhouse. Retiring. Content with the winter air in their fur, snow crunching beneath their paws. One by one, they disappear off of my trail.
But I cannot slake this itch under my skin.
Jay, Saint, and Dante follow me as I stray further into the woods, following no path other than my instincts. I do not take us through the gorge again; the wind is practically screaming in my ear that danger goes that way .
By the time I stop, the moon is nearly gone behind the horizon, and the rocky overhang is once again where we rest, surveying the forest. That same blanket of stillness I'd felt after running around Coyote Bills descends over the Hollow.
A cloud inches across the sky, covering the moon and enveloping the forest in darkness.
No one moves; the only sound up here is our panting.
And then what almost sounds like a woman screaming far off rends the night, followed by several shouts and then silence once again.
Immediately, we're on the move. Jay leads us through the forest, towards the sound, and back towards town.
The wind blows the scent of blood toward us, and then Jay runs up the mountainside. Suddenly, the entire forest is drenched in the smell of fresh blood.
Nose to the ground, the boys start searching for the source.
It does not take them long; a small copse of trees is the source of the metallic tang. Jay's wolf's sharp gaze pierces the darkness, carefully watching.
Our wolves barely make a sound as we prowl closer, cataloging everything. There are many footprints marring the pristine snow here.
Another three steps, and then all at once, I know what we'll find. Someone else has died. Not just an animal, a wild beast. Pack.
When I round the last tree trunk, I see it.
Paws lying on deep red snow. Little tufts of downy fur sticking up from the small pads. One of the claws is partially ripped out, dripping blood. The shifter's dark red-grey fur is matted with it.
A lynx. With an exceptional coat.
The snow around the body is slowly melting, and the warmth of the blood has already spilled out enough to turn the ground into sludge, even under the Cold Moon.
With my stomach in my throat, I push myself to look at the scene before me with a detached eye. To not be completely useless. We've seen plenty of dead animals, gorged on raw flesh as a wolf. I can put my emotions aside for this. To look . To see.
I look at the body while Jay and the boys look over the forest floor, trying to catch a scent.
That's not how a ribcage is supposed to look, and the spine doesn't make that particular curvature naturally. Whatever happened to this person was brutal.
There is a deep, jagged gouge ripped into them from the neck, through the chest and stomach cavity, clumps of their beautiful fur dotting the snow all around the small clearing.
If I were to wager on it, I would bet that is why the body remains. Too much of the coat was ruined to be mounted.
The Whites are nothing if not petty and trivial enough to abandon a trophy because of a perceived defect. After all, they'd only taken Mark's head to mount, the area on him with the darkest fur.
I don't need to investigate further, but I know the boys need another few minutes, so I turn and survey the area around us, looking to see if the Whites left anything other than footprints and a body behind.