Page 38 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

Every time I sit down it’s harder to get up, but I keep doing it.

It gets darker and darker and I think, It’s okay. I can fight through this. All I have to do is put one foot in front of the next until I get there—

But then the moon begins to rise.

And the moment I see it, I’m done.

A blinding, nauseating pain shoots through me, a headache so vile it takes my knees out. I crumple, and the pain swells. I’m heaving, emptying my stomach, clutching my head, and thinking that a better idea might be to pick up any rock I can find and bash these fucking things right out of my head—

“Okay, then,” Maddox says, with a quiet finality in her voice, “I think we’re done.”

“I can keep going,” I manage to moan, though I’m not even remotely certain that’s true. “I just need a minute.”

“You can take that minute,” Maddox tells me. “You can take fifteen. I’m going to call in reinforcements.”

She shrugs out of my pack and slings it down to the ground.

The headache hasn’t exactly eased, but I’m getting used to breathing through that bright, vicious clamp of agony.

Tears are streaming down my face, yet somehow I don’t care about that.

Not even when I can feel them start to get too cold on my cheeks, because it’s already winter up this way and we haven’t even crossed the timberline.

I watch blearily as Maddox stands up again and walks a little bit farther up the trail. Then she stretches, dipping her head back and seeming to almost sigh, as if she’s arching into the moon itself, and then—

It’s like there’s a burst of light—though I think it’s more the suggestion of it—and then she changes .

She shifts right there before me. One moment she’s the girl I’ve always known, the mystery no one has ever been able to solve, and the next—

It’s like for a split second, I can see the human and the wolf tangled up together, superimposed, one over the next, but then it’s just her again.

Only now she’s a wolf.

Wolf Maddox has those same smoky-quartz eyes and a beautiful coat, multicolored like her hair. She’s much bigger than I expected, yet somehow manages to keep that lithe, easy athleticism she’s always had.

“Wow,” I whisper, because even through the horror of this headache, she’s amazing. “It’s kind of a shame you ever have to be human.”

I can see a wolfy sort of smile.

Then she tilts back her head and howls.

It’s a long, exquisitely wild, desolate, and exultant sound.

It seems to expand inside of me, like its own tide. As long as it goes on, I feel no pain. There is only that song of hers, spilling out into the night. Dancing with the moon.

Filling not only me, but the valley all around us.

Maybe the whole world.

I remember the first time I heard the wolves howl I was hiding in the house with Gran and Augie and thinking we wouldn’t last the night.

This is the same sound, and it’s not that it isn’t scary, because it is.

It makes all the hair on my body seem to prickle, and some of it is surely standing up straight.

But it’s different when the wolf making that sound is directly in front of me.

And is also my friend.

She stops and cocks her head slightly.

Then she howls again, longer this time, and I want to say it feels lonely inside me—but that’s not quite right. It’s more that it reminds me how lonely I am, which isn’t the same thing.

It seems to wind its way into my heart and burrow in deep.

This time, when the last note of her song fades away, there is a deep, expectant pause.

I think even the fir trees that stand watch are waiting. Listening.

And then, far off in the distance, I hear an answering howl.

I’m pretty sure that what I’m hearing is coming from the Coastal Range, over on the other side of the valley, though we are currently in a different mountain range altogether, the High Cascades.

It makes me want to cry a little, and not from the pain, but because this is how the wolves keep track of each other.

It’s beautiful. More than beautiful, it’s distinctly untamed and wonderful, but it also reminds me that there are whole worlds operating all around me all the time that I know nothing about.

I’m still on the ground. Maddox pads over and nudges me with her muzzle, and I take that to mean that she’s encouraging me to actually sit and rest. To lean back against the nearest tree instead of crouching on my hands and knees like I’m about to leap up and keep grinding.

When I gingerly arrange myself against the tree and even let the trunk hold my head up, she whines in approval.

Then she sits, her head cocked, and waits.

I’m not entirely surprised when my eyes drift closed, as if my body can’t bear another moment of using any energy that isn’t focused on fighting the pain like spikes in my temples and an iron crown welded onto my head.

I don’t nap. I don’t think I fall asleep, because my head hurts too much for that, but I drift.

The good thing about this terrible headache—assuming there is one—is that it keeps the vision at bay. I can feel it pressing in at me. It feels imperative. Like a rude stranger pounding on the door—

But at least there’s still that door.

I tell myself that’s something.

High up on this mountain, I hear only the wind moving through the trees.

It smells like snow. The ground I’m sitting on is frigid already, and I expect that as the night wears on, it will be colder.

It might even snow on us. If I could move, I suspect that it wouldn’t take long to cross out of what little protection the trees offer and scramble around toward the summit, fully exposed to the moon and the elements alike.

But I don’t move. I sit. I wait.

Only when I hear Maddox let out what sounds like a bark do I open my eyes.

Then immediately wish that I kept them closed, because the biggest wolf I’ve ever seen comes loping up the trail, all fangs and claws and a head that looks large enough to gulp down the two of us like a couple of pieces of candy. If that.

He’s enormous. I’m pretty sure he’s as big as my truck, but he moves like fear and dread. Silent and focused, death on four massive paws.

And when he sees us waiting there on the trail in front of him, he bares his ferocious teeth.

Then growls.