Moon Chilled (2 page)

Though there'd been a few months, back when I was thirteen and already feeling far older than my years, that I hadn't trusted myself or my wolf. We were alone, living in the summertime woods on the western slope of the Colorado Mountains, living off berries and the few fish that I'd been able to catch. Too weak to fight her off, my wolf came out. I remember crying after that first shift. I was sore and stiff, and walking on paws was a completely new experience for me. But she kept me alive through the fall, and by the time that winter hit I was more than ready to let her come out to play. I was fourteen then and more of an adult than any of the older teenagers I briefly encountered in my one trip to the mall—which was some sort of hell on earth, as far as I was concerned. It was noisy and crowded, not to mention completely enclosed with no real room to run or hide if I needed to get away. That wasn't an experience I'd be going through again if I could help it.

I'd felt old since I had first stepped foot outside of the pack I'd belonged to at the time. I was glad to leave them, but I'd grown up fast as a child out on my own. If I hadn't had my wolf inside me, giving me strength and telling me that I couldn't give up because I didn't have a choice and she wasn't going to die with me, I don't know if I could have made it through. I like to tell myself that I could have been just fine. But I know the truth. I needed her, and still do. I wouldn't have lived through my first fall without her there to help me.

Keeping my head down, I walked quickly past a car parked in front of the old hardware store. It was idling and a woman was sitting in the front seat and I could see her watching me curiously, like most of the people in this little town did. I was fine being the weirdo girl that lived in the hunting cabin outside of town. It kept me safe. Attention wasn't something that I needed, but money often was. Once a month, anyhow. I hunted for what I could, stole when I had to—which was rarely, since if I got caught it meant more attention on me—and dealt with any lack between the two however I had to. There was nothing particularly glamorous about my life. I bathed in cool rivers, ate dinner on my paws with my face buried in a fresh kill, and slept in an old mattress with so many smells in it that I had to use cotton balls stuffed up my nose to be able to sleep through the night. Which was why I rarely slept in the cabin unless it was too cold for me to do otherwise. It was rare, but I preferred to sleep in there with the old wood stove to keep me warm rather than shiver under the snow as my wolf.

I didn't need much in life, likely because I'd gone so long without. Ten long years of being on my own had given me quite a bit of perspective when it came to material things. I did need one thing in this world, but the tawny wolf whose image instantly came to my mind couldn't be helped. She was too far away and long ago lost to me, despite what our bond said. I tried not to think about her too often, but when two people were as connected as us, it was hard not to. I missed her every minute of every day and had done so since the terrible night when I'd had to leave her behind. I shook my head and tried not to think about those thoughts. They wouldn't do me any good, after all.

My mate couldn't be saved. Not while she chose to live with that pack, to be with him. I missed her and wished that I could have her by my side. Wished that we could play in the summer sun and run around laughing and chasing each other like we had when we were children. She was my mate, my own true love, and the compliment to my withered soul. If I had such a thing. But she couldn't be saved.

No, that was a lie. And one I'd been fighting with myself for years about. Maiki could be freed; she could be mine again. If I were willing to go back there. But that would never happen again. I could not live in that pack. I would not. I'd run from there for a reason, and I would never be going back. I swore that to myself, and though it meant keeping us apart, I'd had to be selfish just that once in order to keep myself safe. Even though it hurt more than I could possibly bear.

I let the chill of the mountain air fill my lungs as I thought. Of course the ridiculous idea that it wouldn't be that hard to go back came into my mind. I let the idea fall away. Going back wasn't an option if I wanted to stay alive. I knew this and knew what was waiting for me back there if I ever did return. I had seen him enough in my nightmares over the years that I didn't need to see him with my eyes as well. Maiki was lost to me. Forever. The sooner I let that idea settle inside myself and give up hope, the better off I'd be.

And yet I'd sent a letter with my new phone number to her just the summer before. It was probably stupid, but the human part of me couldn't let it go. Or maybe it was that my wolf refused to believe that Maiki was lost to us. Either way, I'd put in the effort and made sure to have my phone on me when I wasn't letting my wolf out just in case she called. She hadn't contacted me since the night I'd left. I didn't even know if she still even lived there. She was alive; I was sure of that much, at least. But more than that, I couldn't tell. It was enough for me, most of the time, just to know that she was alive. I didn't know if she was safe, but alive was close enough, I guessed. For me it had to be.

I wrestled with the idea of going back to my little hunting cabin. I had an old book or two there that I could read again and enough logs to make a quick fire. I even had a few bags of tea remaining from the time I'd indulged and purchased the box because it was on sale and the grocery store manager was watching me too closely for me to steal it. An evening in was starting to sound nice. But my wolf wanted none of it. She didn't even want to consider the idea, even when I offered to let her take over so that she could lie inside the heated cabin as well. But she wanted to run, to explore, to see what she could with her predator's gaze. There were elk nearby, and she wanted to see if their numbers were larger than the small group that had moved through the week before. I knew that she intended to hunt if there was a young one there that would make an easy meal. She didn't hunt big game often; to do so would be wasteful when we were the only large predator in the area to enjoy the kill.

My wolf did not waste food, no matter how easy the catch. It had taken me a while to understand that after she'd refused to take over my body and come out to take on an injured bull elk. He would have been a quick, easy kill. But his meat would have gone to waste as well, and his death would have meant little. Respect in all things, she'd taught me. A life was a precious thing, and taking one just because I could was not allowed. We'd gone hungry that night, but I had learned my lesson well enough and hadn't questioned her judgment after that. She spotted the food, I let her take over if she wasn't doing so already, and then we ate.

The parts we couldn't eat like the bones and skins we sold to the taxidermist in the next town over so that he could stuff them and mount them as some sort of macabre trophies onto the wall. He didn't question us on where we got our animals and never once bothered to see my hunting permit. I guess that's because he realized I didn't have one. He probably thought I was odd, especially since I had known nothing about guns when he'd wondered what I had used to bring the first elk down. I didn't know what he paid everyone else, but I guessed that it was more than what I got for my skins and antlers. I didn't let it bother me, since it wasn't as if I needed the money for something aside from rent. My utilities were covered by my rent, and my only outside cost, my phone, had the same amount of minutes on it since the day I'd purchased it.

My simple little life wouldn't have worked for most people. But they weren't a werewolf hiding out in plain sight amongst a bunch of mountain humans either.

My wolf persisted, telling me again that she wanted to hunt today. I worked to calm her the best I could. It worked, just barely. But I knew she'd still want to do something. She got bored easily when she didn't have a task. And it had been a good week since I'd let her out to hunt. In the winter, when food was far scarcer than any other time of the year, I didn't let her out as often. It took too much energy, and without something to hunt on the largely deserted mountain, there wasn't any point. I'd gone a week without food before, though it had hurt and I wouldn't recommend it. But when I had to, I knew that I could.

"I'll let you out soon," I whispered, giving her that promise. But it would not be today, and it absolutely wouldn't be so close to town. We'd tracked a small buck to the outside of a rancher's farm over the summer. As a wolf, I look like any other out there in the world, and so the rancher had tried to shoot at me. I was fast and he was a bad shot, but it was far too close of a call for me to forget it anytime soon. He'd only seen a wolf near his cattle; I couldn't very well blame him. He didn't know that my tastes went to the far gamier than a simple side of beef, but she'd made sure to stay well away from the rancher's property after that. It was far too dangerous—I couldn't very well go to a hospital and somehow explain a gunshot wound.

The more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to spend the day cooped up in the cabin. It was a decent enough space, for a human, and I did still want a quiet evening with a cup of tea, a warm fire, and a good book. But I could get those things later. With it being winter I spent far too much time in the cabin anyway. My wolf and I liked the sun on our backs, the rush of racing through the fallen leaves, and feeling the mountain air on our skin. No, we wouldn't be going back to the cabin so soon. Not when there was a whole world to explore.

I calmed my wolf the best I could, reminding her that although there were places that we hadn't yet explored in town, we wouldn't be going near them either. It was too dangerous. My wolf understood self-preservation, likely more than I did, but she was still a risk-taker in places where I wasn't. She was faster than I was and could blend in easily with the white forest around us. But I didn't want to risk the people in town putting out traps for us. Getting caught was definitely not to my list of things to do that day, not that I often had a list. Going out and deciding what I wanted to do from each moment to the next was far more my speed. There was less stress that way, or at least I thought so. I watched the people go back and forth to their jobs, to the grocery store, to get gas in their cars. And I wondered how they did it. And why they put up with it. I liked my way a lot more.

With excess energy still thick in my veins, I took off into the higher places in the winter forest. I went off the trails, stayed away from the homes high on cliffs surrounded by woods, and began to run. I raced over fallen trees and around bright white Aspens, shivering in the cold wind. My boots were heavy, and I wished for the feeling of the snow and ice against my toes but knew better than to risk it as I took a sharp corner and leapt over a rock shaped like a giant frog. I misjudged the ground on the other side of the frog and ended up sliding down the hill. I rolled, fallen leaves sticking in my hair as I tried my best to avoid hitting any downed trees. At the end of the steep hill I rolled haphazardly onto my back and, with my face red and my hair a mess, I gave a mighty whooping cry of joy.

I sat up and spent a good chunk of time, until the sun had fallen in the sky, getting the leaves out of the tangled mess my hair had become. I used to care more about my appearance. Back when Maiki had told me I was beautiful; when she had sat behind me, quietly brushing out my hair and humming to me a lullaby she said came from her mother but I suspected was just something she'd made up. I met her mother only once a couple of weeks before her death. My own father died shortly after that. Maiki's mother hadn't seemed like the kind of woman to sing at all, much less a lullaby to her only child.

"Big moon in the sky, guide this child, love her, keep her, raise her, something ... something, something," I whispered to the falling snow. I didn't know the rest of the words to Maiki's lullaby and wasn't even sure if those that I thought I did remember were correct.

My hair was longer, and darker, than the last time Maiki had seen it. That simple thought brought a wave of memories and remembered sensations that I braced myself against. I'd held her hand, kissed her cheek, lied next to her in the summer sun. We'd been thirteen and perfectly, blissfully happy for one brief shining moment in our young lives.

Before everything had changed so dramatically. I got up and pressed my hand against the stiff, biting bark of a nearby tree. A buck had rubbed part of it down, exposing the soft underside of the bark but also leaving the rest of it rough. I didn't mind the pain as I pushed my hand against that bark. In fact, I welcomed it for the escape it brought. In that moment of pain I was able to forget, to focus on the pain in my hand and not the remembered pain of a night long ago. It was simply me, alone in a forest full of snow and trees far older than I was. And I took some comfort in that solitude.

My energy spent, I pulled away from the tree and started walking back down the hill. I'd gone up far, much more so than I'd meant to, and the climb down required my focus to not slip and fall. I appreciated that I needed to concentrate and gave it my all, focusing on my task even in the smallest detail, until Maiki in the form of her tawny wolf took her place at the back of my mind, once again giving me peace in a world full of noise and pain. The last time I'd seen her hadn't been so blissful, though. I remembered everything in perfect, horrific clarity, but most of all I remembered running. I'd gone as far east as possible, but somehow I'd always known that my home was in the Colorado Rockies, so I'd never really been able to get all that far away. Anything without mountains felt too flat. I'd made it as far as the Kansas border before turning around and racing back. There'd been no trees, no elk, no crystal-clear and bone-chillingly cold streams full of mountain trout. The entire place had felt far too alien to me; I'd refused to leave again, knowing right where my home, my territory, was.

Once I'd reached the edge of the forest I had a choice to make. Back to the cabin, where I was sure my memories would come to torment me once again, or to find the man's barn that needed some repairs and see if he'd let me do a bit of work today. I chose the easy answer and started heading back toward town, as much as I disliked being around all the humans and their busy little lives.