The last of Spring’s cool rains had given way to a clinging dampness that rose from the forest floor in spectral veils of mist. The air tasted of wet earth, rotting leaves, and the sweet, green urgency of new growth. In a sun-dappled clearing where the ground was soft and thick with moss, two wolves moved through the shadows of this damp world.

  Fenris, a creature of darkness made flesh, moved with a predatory grace that was currently being undermined by profound disorientation. His paws—large, black, and capable of silent passage over frozen tundra—slipped on a mossy stone. He stumbled, caught himself, then stumbled again as a wave of sensory input that was not his own crashed over him.

  The Imprint was not a simple tether. It was a blending that felt as though his essence was enmeshed with hers. When he was in his wolf-shape, and she in hers, the boundaries between their consciousnesses grew irrationally porous. He could feel the powerful, coiled strength in her haunches as if it were his own. He could taste the damp air through her nostrils, sharper, somehow more vibrant than it was in his. And when he thought too hard about placing his own foot, he would find himself thinking of her foot, her gait, her balance. The result was a clumsy, jarring dissonance. He was trying to pilot two bodies at once, and his own was the only one suffering for it.

  Albi, conversely, was a creature transformed. Her white fur, stained now with earthy mud at the paws and flank, seemed to glow in the patches of sunlight. She moved with a liquid, joyful confidence, her steps light and eager. Every rustle of a vole in the underbrush, every scent of bloom or decay on the wind, was a marvel to her. Fenris, swimming in her mind, felt it all: the sheer, unadulterated aliveness of it. The wolf-form had given her back a sense of power, of agency, of existing fully in the world—things the years in Deep Water had stripped from her.

  We should not have waited so long to acclimate you to your wolf form, Fenris pushed the thought toward her, a grumble laced with his own frustration as he misjudged the height of a fallen log and had to scramble over it inelegantly. When our young have their First Change it is best to get them started to the fitting within a fortnight as the latest.

  Albi let out a soft, chuffing sound—a laugh. She turned her head, her honey-smoke eyes glinting with amusement. It is not I, my Alpha, who appears to need the early acclimating.

  Fenris rolled his lupine eyes—a strange, expressive gesture in the beast’s face—and spun, nipping playfully at her hindquarters. She danced away, nimble as a shadow.

  Besides, her thought came, laced with practical warmth, it was not entirely up to us, but to little Isangrim, too. He would have gummed Jorik’s ear clean off if we left him without the distraction of being able to suckle on sweets while we are away. It was important that we waited.

  An image bloomed in Fenris’s mind, projected from hers: Isangrim was now six moons old, a round, sturdy creature with fat rolls on his thighs and a thatch of dark, silky hair. In her memory, the babe sat on a fur in the longhouse, his face smeared with mashed berries and mashed bread, one tiny hand wrapped possessively around his own small, carved wooden spoon–a gift from Jorik. He saw the wolf-head on the end and curiously plopped it into his wet mouth, earning a joyful shriek from Albi who whispered, Isangrim the Devourer. The babe’s golden eyes were bright with a calm focus, but still swimming with a bottomless hunger that was only partly for the spoonful of mash Albi held out for him. It was for Albi’s milk that the babe had his strongest appetite. Woven through the image was Albi’s own feeling: a fierce, protective possessiveness so potent it was like a physical wall around the child.

  The warmth that spread through Fenris’s chest was his own, but it was kindled by hers. To know, with the absolute certainty the bond provided, that Albi loved his son—that she was not merely fulfilling a duty, but nurturing a life she cherished—was a balm on a wound he had not realized was open.

  He was so deep in the warmth of her feeling, in the vividness of the shared sight of his son, that he completely missed his footing. His fore-paw sank into a soft patch of mud where he expected solid ground, his momentum carried him forward, and he landed face-first with a wet thump against the mossy earth.

  He lay on his side for a moment, the world spinning—both his world and the echo of Albi’s, which was currently a view of his own muddy underbelly as she looked down at him. Her white paws now thoroughly caked in brown earth. She tilted her head, and Fenris knew if she could she would have laughed.

  This is what you get for being so nosey in my mind all the time.

  I can’t always control it, Albi.

  You can. You just choose not to out of willful stubbornness. Out of madness.

  Fenris could hear the smirk in the thought.

  He heaved himself onto his back, exposing his black belly to the dappled light, looking up at her.

  Don’t make me put you in your place. He warned half-heartedly.

  Is it you or I who is on the ground?

  Albi sat back on her haunches, a very human gesture in her lupine form. She leaned down and pushed her cold, wet nose against his muzzle, a gentle bump. You’ve gotten into the bad habit of always trying to be in my head, Fenris of Black Rock. That is why this is hard for you. You have to learn to silence me, every once in a while. Not everything in my mind is worth investing interest in.

  Fenris got his paws under him and sat up, shaking a shower of droplets and leaf litter from his fur.

  I have not made it a…..bad habit.

  I know you watch my dreams, too, Fenris. And there is no good reason for it.

  You expect me to believe you’ve never been curious and watched mine?

  Isangrim is sleeping through the night now. I will not waste my hours of rest watching your dreams.

  Why do I feel you are lying?

  I am not lying.

  How do you do that? It is infuriating.

  Fenris stood, shaking his massive frame one final time. He met her gaze, the connection between their minds humming.

  What is it you think I am doing?

  How did you learn how to…..block your thoughts from me?

  I am not blocking my thoughts from you, Fenris.

  I know you feel your pulse hammering in that soft place at your neck. Why must you lie to me, Albi?

  Perhaps you don’t need to know everything.

  Perhaps I want to.

  What I want is for you to focus on more important things. Like how to walk beside me without trying to slip into my skin every other step.

  She held his stare for a long moment, the forest sounds swelling around them—the chatter of birds, the sigh of the wind in the pines. Then, without another word thought or spoken, she turned and continued down the path, her white tail a silent banner. Fenris followed, his own steps a little surer now, his mind a little more settled in his own skull.

  How is Asger?

  The question surfaced in Fenris’s mind from Albi, quiet as a leaf settling on still water. It surprised him—a hard thing to be, after moons spent drowning in the echo of her every heartbeat, the ghost of her every breath. He knew the taste of her dreams, the salt of her night-terrors. She was right, he thought miserably, it had become a bad habit.

  Though, her interest in Asger shouldn't have surprised him entirely. He’d lain beside her through long, watchful hours, his fingers tracing the silver river of her hair while she slept, he was afraid to do so while she was awake, witnessing the phantom battles she fought in the realm of dreams. Often, it was Obin’s leering face she tore at with spectral fangs. Sometimes, it was Asger’s storm-grey eyes staring back from the darkness, filled with a challenge that had turned to his bitter defeat.

  He has healed well, Fenris pushed back, the thought carrying the scent of damp earth and distant rain. He took the Hunters south at the first thaw. He enjoys the end of spring away from Black Rock. He paused, the image of his own, near-empty longhouse table forming between them. He has not broken bread in my hall since the Challenge, neither him nor those who side with him, and only few of the Hunters he leads. He does not….. speak to me as he once did.

  A soft, huffing breath from Albi’s wolf-form. Through their bond, Fenris felt a sudden, hot flood of shame—not her own, he realized, but her perception of his own unspoken guilt over the rift in his pack. Fenris shook his great head, trying not to let the feeling grow too sharply in his chest; he’d done well avoiding it this long. There was nothing else left to do about it, besides.

  If this is how it must be, then this is how it must be.

  Albi said no more of it. For that, he was grateful.

  The scent of damp earth and sun-warmed pine came thick in their nose then, brought by a rogue warm wind. The thoughts of Asger and Black Rock were headaches that Fenris decided could wait until they got home; the forest of Skoltha was calling to him. The one place he could be only Fenris, and escape the burdens of his responsibilities for a while. Fenris found he did better when he matched his steps in time with hers, and had fallen into a nearly perfected, synchronized rhythm.

  He turned his head, watching her quietly. The restlessness that had clung to Albi inside the village was gone out here, burned away by the simple act of being in her pelt.

  I like you out here, Fenris sent, the thought brushing against her mind like a passing breeze.

  You like me anywhere, Fenris. He heard her smile through the thought; imagined, in his mind, the sweetness of it on her woman's face.

  You carry the stillness of the trees and meadow better than the tightness of walls and gates.

  The white wolf beside him chuffed softly, a sound of agreement. Her mind, when it touched his, was clearer, less guarded.

  Nothing about this is complicated. Out here it’s…..well, you know how it is. It’s instinct. It’s….exactly what it’s supposed to be. He felt a surge of pure, unadulterated sensation from her—the powerful flex of muscle under fur, the lethal weight of her own jaws, the absolute certainty of her body as a weapon and a shield.

  I like the strength of it, most.

  Fenris saw Albi’s thoughts slip into the same daydream she does any time she remembers how strong she is as wolf and how weak she’d been before, as human. The river of nonsensical thoughts. How would she kill Obin, when would she do it, should the final image he sees of her be in the form of a wolf or in the woman shape he’d violated? Would she surprise him with the Change? Would she take him awake or asleep?

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  In her wolf form, where the rage was sharper and clearer in her nostrils, she even considered whether taking Obin’s life only was enough. A thought she did not have while in the control of her human mind. Maybe she would need to take his son, first, as he had taken hers. Maybe she would even take his wife. A million different variations of the same sweet dream, playing over and over and as calming to her heart as a lullaby to a babe.

  I haven’t forgotten my promise, Albi. Let me handle it.

  It was not a promise I expected you to keep.

  I am your Alpha. You will not do a thing like this alone. There will be outwaves from it. There will be consequences. At the right time we will—

  I am selfish, Fenris. I am cruel. What consequences you speak of will be no concern to me when I am dead.

  You are neither of those, Albi. And you would not leave Isangrim behind so easily. He has become a son to you, and you a mother to him. I do not believe you would hurt him by inflicting your senseless death upon him. The idea of it alone makes Fenris’ heart twist.

  I don’t want to talk about this, Fen.

  He halted, breaking their synchronized stroll. Albi walked ahead ten spaces out of spite before turning to meet his waiting gaze.

  Is this why you hide your thoughts from me?

  Fenris–

  Is this why you’ve avoided me, all this time, in the night?

  We may speak of this, but I am not speaking of it now. I wish to enjoy my walk, Fen.

  You are not selfish or cruel, but you are unkind, Albi. Fenris huffed, shaking his massive head as if it might also shake away the bristling irritation. The silence that followed was not as comfortable as before, and they no longer moved in unison, side by side. Fenris watched her from behind, as if he might keep an eye on her; as if she might run at any moment.

  I told you before, I will not run away.

  They walked in this silence until the sun’s position in the sky was enough to warm the fur on their haunches now, a lattice of design from the way it filtered down straight through the trees.

  It was Albi then, who broke it, her mind-voice hesitant, almost shy.

  I lied to you before.

  About your plans of revenge?

  About me….watching your dreams.

  Albi stopped, letting Fenris reach her. He turned his great head toward her.

  I have watched them. Once… twice….maybe more.

  And what do I dream about? he asked, a low rumble in his chest.

  Me. Mostly. Almost every night.

  He snorted, a puff of air from his nostrils.

  You flatter yourself, Albi.

  Do I? And then she showed him, her thoughts colored with a playful smirk. It was a memory of a sensation, sharp and illicit. His hands, calloused and warm, cupping the soft weight of her breasts. His mouth, hot and desperate, closing over a peaked nipple. The image he’d created in the dream of her eyes, glacial blue then honey-smoke, looking back down at him from above with a face slack with pleasure as he tasted her milk. It was a fragment, raw and intimate, stolen from the private theatre of his sleeping mind.

  He moved faster than the thought could finish. He launched himself, not with killing intent, but with the playful, overwhelming force of a dominant wolf. He caught her shoulder, bowling her over onto the soft, mossy ground. She yelped, a sound of surprise as his greater weight pinned her. His jaws closed around her throat—not to crush, but to hold. He could feel the frantic pulse of her life beneath his teeth, the warmth of her fur, the quick, startled rhythm of her breath.

  You play a dangerous game his thought growled into her mind, thrumming through the points of contact where his teeth met her skin. When it is you who has refused the call of me all these moons.

  He increased the pressure, just a fraction. Not enough to hurt, but enough for her to feel the formidable strength held in check. Enough for her to know, viscerally, the difference between a play-bite and the real thing. He felt her swallow hard against his muzzle, a flicker of genuine unease beneath the thrill.

  He released her, pushing himself off and back onto his haunches. He stood over her, his sides heaving slightly. It wasn’t anger that simmered in him now, but a hotter, more frustrating brew. As if it were possible to become more frustrated with her. The Imprint between them was a constant, low thrum of want, a pull as fundamental as gravity.

  At times he had felt her desire, sometimes an exact mirror to his own, a current that ran just beneath her skin. That was the infuriating part. She wanted him. He knew it, as surely as he knew the scent of the pines. Yet she denied it. She built these…..walls, somehow, around her mind. She turned away from him in the night when he knew she wished to turn in. She fed the babe and pretended to sleep beside the boy until his own frustrated dreams took him.

  As she rolled to her feet, shaking the moss from her white coat, a thought flashed through her mind—swift, panicked, like a fish darting into deep shadow. He caught only the edges of it before she could shove it down.

  The wolves have taken everything but my heart, and I am not going to let it go so easily.

  She stood, meeting his gaze, her honey-smoke eyes widened with the naked, uncomfortable truth hanging between them in the silent forest.

  I wish you dreamed of me in the night, Albi. Fenris hadn’t meant to think it to her, but the hollow throb would not ease without its admission.

  They walked on in the continued silence. The path, little more than a deer trail, wound down a gentle slope and opened into a small, secluded clearing dominated by a single, massive willow. Its branches hung in a green-gold curtain, stirring softly in the breeze.

  The sight of it was the gallop of a horse in his chest.

  Memory, vivid and sensory, flooded him: the dappled shade, the soft moss, the scent of Ygrid’s skin–wild mint and meadowsweet. Her laughter, muffled against his shoulder. The specific way the light had filtered through the leaves the day they had coupled here, fiercely, joyfully, all those moons ago.

  This was where Isangrim had been conceived.

  Do you want to stop? Have a look around here? Albi asked gently, feeling the sudden, jagged spike of his grief through their bond.

  Fenris shook his great head, a denial. But his paws carried him forward anyway, drawn to the soft, bare earth beneath the willow’s embrace. He nosed at the ground, searching for a trace, a lingering ghost of Ygrid's scent on the bark, in the grass. There was nothing. Time and rain and the two seasons she never got to see had washed her away.

  When you wish for a daughter, you couple beneath a willow. For it is the Tree of Women. Fenris says through their mind-talk, slow and aching, It is a mid-wives tale, but Ygrid desperately wanted a daughter. I don’t know if she….I don’t know that she ever knew Isangrim. She might have died with her conviction that the babe was a girl.

  She would have loved him fiercely, no matter. Albi declared, with the strength of conviction.

  Aye. She would have.

  Albi drifted back at the edge of the clearing, giving him space, her nose lifted to test the air here and there.

  I have become a mother many times, Fenris, her thoughts came gently but clear as a bell in the stillness. And I would have chosen my own death over the death of any child I was birthing. You did not fail her. Give her the honor of the Mother’s Sacrifice, not this weakened pity you, and all those in Black Rock, have for her. She would not pity herself. She would think herself strong and brave; she would expect you all, too, as well.

  Fenris exhaled, a long, shuddering breath that misted in the cool air. He stood there, beneath the empty, sighing branches, the weight of Albi’s understanding both a comfort and a new kind of ache.

  Then, it shifted.

  Not him. Her.

  Albi’s head snapped up, her ears swiveling forward. Every line of her body went taut, a bowstring pulled. Her nostrils flared.

  And through the bond, like a door suddenly thrown open, Fenris smelled it too.

  Blood. Musk. Living warmth.

  Elk, Albi.

  The grief vanished, burned away in an instant by a hotter, older fire. The man’s sorrow was submerged beneath the wolf’s primal need. In the space of a heartbeat, their shared melancholy was replaced by a single, synchronized, predatory focus. The white wolf and the black wolf turned as one, all their previous thoughts forgotten, their world narrowed to the scent of the wind and the promise of the hunt.

  The sound of the forest was now the pounding rhythm of their paws against the soft, damp earth. East, chasing the rich, musky perfume of the elk. For Fenris, the pull of it was a clean, sharp focus, a blessed reprieve from the turbulent ocean of shared sensation and heavy emotion. Here, there was only the taste of the animal on the wind, the rustle of its passage through the budding undergrowth, the promise of hot blood and full bellies.

  He pushed ahead of her, his longer legs eating up the ground, leading them down a mossy slope into a shallow valley where the air grew thicker with the prey’s presence. They slowed, melting into the dappled shadows of towering pines. Ten paces ahead, the bull moved—a silhouette of solid, shifting darkness among the trunks, its antlers a crown of dead branches against the green.

  And beside him, Fenris felt Albi coming apart.

  Her mind, a fortress of grim control, was chaos. The wolf-hunger, ancient and raw, was flooding her human consciousness, drowning it mercilessly. He felt the violent quiver in her haunches, the saliva pooling in her mouth, the blind, driving urge to charge, to take, to kill. She was a bowstring drawn too tight and about to snap.

  He shifted, a subtle movement of his shoulder, pressing it firmly against hers. The physical contact was an anchor. Through the bond, he didn’t send words, but a concept: Wait. Watch. Together.

  He felt her confusion, her frustration, a red-hot spike against the cool, focused tapestry of the hunt he was weaving. He sent another: the image of a pincer movement, of driving the elk toward a deadfall he’d scented upstream. He felt her mind snag on it, the chaotic hunger beginning to channel, to organize around a plan. The quivering in her limbs stilled.

  A breath. Two.

  Then, with a thought as sharp as a snapped twig, they moved.

  Fenris went low, a black streak flowing through the ferns, angling to cut off the elk’s retreat. Albi went high, breaking cover with a speed that belied her newness, a white ghost startling the beast from its grazing. The elk’s head snapped up, its eyes wide. It spun, hooves churning the soft earth, and bolted—directly into the path Fenris had envisioned.

  Fenris felt Albi’s exhilaration, the pure, unthinking joy of the run, the power in her limbs. He felt his own calculated fury. They harried the great beast, nipping at its flanks, driving it onward until its sides heaved and its tongue lolled. Finally, with a coordinated rush, Fenris lunged for the hamstring, his jaws finding purchase in a crack of tendon. The elk bellowed, stumbled. Albi was there in an instant, a white bolt of fury, her teeth finding its throat.

  It was over quickly; a thrashing of limbs that stilled into a final, shuddering sigh. The triumph that rushed through them was shared and warm. They stood over their kill, panting, the coppery smell of blood rich in their nostrils, a profound satisfaction humming through the bond.

  The crack of the gunshot was an obscenity in the quiet forest and in this moment of joy.

  Fenris felt the impact before he understood it. A searing, dull-thunderbolt of pain blossomed in his side, stealing the air from his lungs. Warmth—a shocking, immediate gush—spread across his ribs.

  He looked down, fearing the torn fur, the blood welling from his own flesh. But there was nothing. His black fur was unmarked.

  His head whipped up.

  Albi stood only two paces away, her white coat stark against the green. A dark, spreading stain bloomed low on her flank, vivid as a poppy on snow. The connection between them screamed with her pain, her shock, her sudden, terrifying weakness, her confusion.

  His nose flared. Beneath the smells of blood and fear and elk, he caught it: the acrid stink of gunpowder, the sour sweat of men. Not Skoltha. Humans.

  A second gunshot shattered the air, buzzing past his ear, slamming into a tree behind him with a spray of splinters.

  Rage.

  Not hot, but cold—a glacial, all-consuming tide that washed away every thought, every instinct but one: Destroy.

  He moved.

  The two men were crashing through the brush, reloading their long, clumsy rifles, their faces slack with fear and greed. Fenris was on the first one before the man could raise his weapon. There was no artistry to it, no wolf’s grace. It was pure, rending fury. He heard bones crunch, felt flesh tear, tasted the salt-tang of human blood. The second man screamed, fumbling with his powder horn. Fenris turned, a dark hurricane of tooth and claw. The rage did not subside; it fed on itself. He lost count of the blows, the bites. He was a creature of vengeance, and vengeance was not sated by death, only by total annihilation.

  Then, cutting through the red haze, a sound that was not in his mind. Weak, threading, human.

  “Fenris.” A gasp of air. “Help me.”

  He froze, the man-shaped ruin dripping from his jaws. The cold rage shattered, replaced by a terror so absolute it froze his blood. He turned, and had to squint to see through the spaces of the trees, back the way he’d come.

  Albi the wolf no longer, was in her woman form, impossibly pale, and collapsed beside the dead elk. She was naked and blood soaked on the leaves. Her eyes, wide and pain-glazed, trying to find him.

  She was dying.