Eyes meet eyes as Blu holds his own throat before we look down at the mess my teeth just made in his father's Beta's. It's all red and messy, torn flesh that gurgles and seizes as he chokes for a moment. His legs wheel in the dance of the dying, his hands are shaking, I can hear his heart pounding frantically as his excelled body tries to heal itself before it is too late. And then, he goes still. No movement. No life. Nothing.
I swallow hard, my actions were so rash, so inappropriate. Why did I bother to defend someone who has never defended me? Fear crashes through me. What punishment awaits a rankless female who has killed a male?
"You just killed him." Blu says, staring down at his body. "He wasn't going to kill me, we were mindlinking, he was asserting his dominance over me. Because it is there. Do you realize what you have just done?"
I forgot about mindlinking, it has been so long since I have been able to do so, out of range of my birth pack, unable to connect with those of another. I nod my wolf head, because I do realize my actions. And I know what happens when decisions have fallout. Consequences.
"Montana, they are going to kill you. Do you hear me? They are going to kill you!"
I shift back, watching him shiver and look up because I am naked. "I know! But what do you care? I have not been in your life for winters on end, and even when I was, I was nothing."
"You don't know me, female. I have been working hard for you and the pack before you returned. I am trying to take over to make a change."
"Me and the pack. Yeah right." I spit. "Because the past doesn't matter, and everything you have done to me before now is history? Right. It does matter, Blu. I matter!"
He stares me down, both of us unflinching and unwavering.
"Do you remember walking me to the pack's council, to my death, and allowing them to drown me? Do you remember males, especially Romulus, taking me away to private places? Do you remember taking all those females to bed right in front of my face and parading them all around?" Shouting at him, voice cracking with the pain of these memories. His face is slate blank. I know this expression. "Well, do you?"
Slowly, he nods his head.
"Fuck you." Said with so much venom my vision quakes. Words are powerful but they don't work to convey meanings well enough for me and I'm left feeling overheated and then exhausted.
Looking down at the body, I feel another shiver of anticipation for the punishments to come. It will be torturous before it is deadly.
"I might have an idea." Blu says softly but holding strength in the tone. "But first, grab some clothes from the back of the trunk so I can think."
As I pull on a massive wool sweater that takes away the bite of the wind with some soft pants that are also too big, I think of how long this day is becoming. The sun has already sank into the western sky, out of view, but the night has only just begun. I think about how different life will be in the South, where my parents are not waiting for me. An empty house with an empty white room. I wonder if they will allow me to build my own. Then I shake my head, I won't get a life down there. My end is the same as my parent's current state.
Coming back around the side of the car, I look at Blu expectantly. Only, he has stripped himself of his clothing and shifted into this large brown wolf with a dark marking between his eyes and on his paws. He is beautiful, with a lean musculature that will one day turn to bulk. I can see the scarring on his face now, pink lines where no fur grows, narrowly missing his eye. I remember his reaction to seeing the branding on my wolf's back, the way his eyes hardened but remained unreadable. Those pale blue eyes regard me for a moment, before he lunges and tears into Romulus's already clean throat wound, mangling it. I feel my eyes widen as I take in the sight, unsure if I can stomach this sort of savagery.
Eyes look away, hearing his wolf snarl and flesh tear further, scenting blood's metallic tang permeate the air again in thicker waves.
When he is shifted back and redressed, I look at him, unafraid. "Why would you do that?" There is blood splattered on his clothing from close proximity. My stomach twists. "That's... That's...." Is there a word for how wrong it is to damage the dead?
"Disrespectful? How about necessary? Your scent is covered up by mine. He challenged me after talking down about my father, I attacked with right, and he lost his life. That's what happened, right?"
Staring at him with disbelief, my mouth moves but no words come out. I was never good with human language. It shows now in the midst of shock.
"Don't ask questions, Montana. Do you want to die? That's what I thought. Get in the car, repeat the story back to me."
This dominant wolf before me is nothing like the one I remember from when I was young. He heaves the Beta's large body into his arms and lays him in the back seat. His skin is already cold. I shudder, looking up to the darkening sky that is covered with clouds. Anticipation for my return is eating away at the lining of my stomach. I slide my hand over his face to close those eyes that stare up forever and ever. The car is already filling with the scent of dead.
"Get in the car, Wrens." Blu says, calling me by the last name that aches my heart as he closes the door and walks over to the driver's side. My hand is on the handle but I don't get in.
"How do I know this isn't a... Trick?" Staring at him hard, trying to see any truth available. He looks honest, but my mind reels. "Just to get me back to be punished instead of running right now."
He raises a single, light brow. "You would run from your actions? Your choice?"
"If it meant I wouldn't die. If it meant I could do what I am meant to do."
"And what is that?"
Shaking my head, I smile cruelly. "So how do I know?"
"I told you. I have been working hard for this pack. Now, do you really have another option? If you run, I will tell them the truth."
I look down to my hand, still grasping the handle on the door. This dominance he is blanketing me in makes me itch and seethe. I am struggling beneath the weight of the opression to come.
"Repeat the story back to me." He takes my skepticism is stride, climbing in the car. I follow suit, climbing in after and reluctantly shutting the door. Feeling a trap in the making. As he starts the car, we roll down the windows to try and fight the offensive scents permeating from the blood pooling beneath Romulus's throat wound, and I begin the retelling of a lie.
---
As we approach the metal gate that allows a single entrance road into the Southern territory that is fenced in all the way around except for along the river, I begin to notice things I sort of missed. The scent of sage billows into the car in fragrant currents of the in-between desert, followed by the hum of cicadas, and the distant rattle of the fearsome rattlesnake. The scent of spruce trees follows the undercurrent of rocks paled by the hot sun. For now, the clouds cover the sky, but a lingering warmth follows the Fall that hasn't quite lost Summer's embrace yet.
