And there was Seth, too.
She’d dreamed about him. That wasn’t unusual—Lana had always been a people person. She loved meeting people, hearing their stories, getting to know what made them tick. It was a big part of what motivated her travels, the knowledge that the world was full of billions of fascinating strangers she hadn’t met yet. But there was something different about Seth. Maybe it was the way they’d met. She generally made friends in bars and at parties, rarely in life-or-death situations… it was only natural that he’d made a strong impression on her. It could also have something to do with how handsome he was. Dark hair, olive skin, strong features… and those bright silver eyes she’d always thought were so beautiful, the eyes he shared with his species…
The sound of movement from outside stirred her from these reflections, and she felt a blush creep across her cheeks as she pulled herself quickly out of bed. Inappropriate, to be thinking of a near-stranger like that. They’d barely exchanged a handful of sentences. Hopefully, that would change today. Lana pulled her shoes back on and hastened across the cabin to open the door, expecting to see Seth and his pack waiting for her.
A muffled scream escaped her before she could stop it, one hand flying up to cover her mouth. The pack was out here, alright… and so was a half-dismembered deer, the scene like something straight out of a nature documentary. All six wolves were gathered around the carcass, eating greedily, and she turned away, feeling like her face must have turned a vivid shade of green like a children’s cartoon. There was an interrogative bark, and when she turned back, the largest of the wolves was looking right at her, head tilted inquisitively. That was Seth, she thought faintly. There was a scrap of fur clinging to his muzzle, which was stained with blood.
“No thanks,” she called, then winced as she remembered the need to switch languages. “Um—I do not hunger,” she managed. It was a line from a poem. She’d been fairly confident in her expertise with the language, but it wasn’t like she’d practiced it conversationally. The great wolf tilted his head again, a gesture almost like a shrug, and then the pack returned to their meal. Lana slipped away behind the cabin, feeling unwell.
Seth came to find her a little while later, thankfully human-shaped and unstained by blood and viscera. Still handsome, she thought, fighting a mad urge to laugh. She’d been walking around the cabin, trying to find a place where her cell phone might get a signal—but the bars had remained stubbornly empty no matter where she’d stood, or how high she’d stretched her arm. She was itching to shift and make for the cloud cover above, to get a decent dragon’s-eye view of the area… but instinct warned her that her wounds hadn’t yet healed enough for that to be a safe move. Her shoulders were particularly sore, which told her that shifting would reveal her wingsails still in tatters.
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Seth asked now, looking concerned. “Those injuries… surely you’ll need your strength to heal?”
“No,” she said quickly, feeling her stomach turn at the memory of the deer carcass. “No and thank you.” A smile twitched at the corner of his lips, and she narrowed her eyes. “What is it?”
“My apologies,” he said, his expression sobering. “I haven’t met a dragon before. I hadn’t anticipated your accent being so different from ours. Rude of me.”
“No,” she said again, shaking her head quickly. “No, I am the rude one. My Draconic is—old. I don’t speak it often.”
That seemed to confuse him a little. “Draconic?”
“Yes.” She tilted her head. “This language? The language we are speaking?”
“You call the tongue… Draconic.” Another flash of amusement on his face, tinged with a bitterness that made her curious. “I see.”
“Yes. It’s an ancient dragon language. I didn’t know there were wolves who knew it existed, let alone…” She gestured at him. “What doyoucall it, then?”
“We don’t—call it anything. It’s simply the language we speak. All of us,” he added, tilting his head at her curiously… and for a moment, she could see the wolf who’d stood over the carcass with blood dripping from his jaws. “I suppose you mustn’t leave your mountain very often.”
“My what?”
“Speaking of which,” he said briskly, “we ought to get going. It’s half a day’s travel to the Plateau from here at least.”
Frowning, Lana followed him around to the front of the cabin. The deer carcass had been stripped to the bone, and as she watched, a couple of the wolves were dragging it towards the trees, where a small grave had been excavated for the remains. Seth kept vigil as the pack set about burying the creature’s bones, his expression alert and somber, for all the world as though they were at a funeral instead of simply disposing of table scraps. Curious. It would have been easy to dismiss these wolves as savages with blood dripping down their jaws… but there was something beautiful about this ritual, about the careful way the wolves tamped down the loose earth of the grave. The six of them paused for a solemn moment, Seth the only human-shaped among them but still undeniably a part of the group.
Whowerethese wolves, who lived so wild that they hunted and ate their kills raw? She’d heard of some isolated shifter settlements whose members tried to pursue a way of life that was closer to what nature intended for them—had she stumbled across one here? But that made no sense. Settlements like that were few and far between, relying on geographical isolation to keep their existence secret from the ever-increasing surveillance of human technology… how could she have stumbled upon one by mistake? Last she remembered before waking up in the forest last night, she’d been in New York City. Could she really have wandered this far without realizing it? It was beautiful upstate, sure, but certainly not remote enough to support a wolf pack living like this.
The pack set off walking once the bones of their breakfast had been buried, and though she could feel her stomach growling, she knew it was going to be a little while before she was hungry enough to eat raw meat. Her dragon stirred in her skin long enough to register that it had no such reservations, and she pushed it down, gently but firmly. As grateful as she was for the wild instincts that had helped save her life last night, she drew the line at dining like a wild animal.
The beauty of the place settled in around her as their odd little group followed a winding path past the cabin, and Lana quickly fell into the comfortable rhythm of walking. Where had Seth said they were headed? A plateau? They certainly seemed to be heading uphill… and he’d said something about a mountain, too. The terrain did look mountainous, though she was still struggling to get a good sense of the geography.
“The mist,” she said aloud, frowning. “That’s strange.”
Seth glanced curiously down at her. Lana was grateful he’d chosen to return to his human shape. Earlier, the wolves had had some kind of short meeting in their four-legged forms, and she’d felt rather uneasy about the way the six of them kept glancing up at her. Everyone knew that wolves could share each other’s minds when they were in those forms—look through each other’s eyes, hear each other’s every thought, and feel each other’s feelings. She’d gotten a glimpse of that power last night, watching the half-dozen of them move like one creature in six bodies as they’d chased away the beast that had attacked her. That beast… Seth spoke about it like it was as common a sight as a pigeon. Add that to the long, long list of questions she had for him.
“Strange?”
“It’s midmorning,” she pointed out. “Strange that the mist hasn’t cleared yet.” They’d reached a high enough vantage point that she could see a good distance behind them, back the way they’d come. There was the little cabin she’d spent the night in… but it was the trees a little beyond it that had caught her attention. Fog, thick and dense, still obscured the forest there—despite the sunshine that was warming her face.
Seth gave her that look again—that perplexed, half-smiling expression, as though she’d just said something silly. Was it her accent, she wondered? The language was coming back to her with practice, but he still seemed amused by the things she said. “That mist doesn’t clear.”
Lana blinked. “Of course mist clears.”
“Not—” Seth broke off, shaking his head. “I suppose you don’t see much of it, making your home where you do.”
“I don’t really have a home,” Lana said. Why did this wolf keep acting as though he knew all about her? “I travel too much.”
“Travel?” Again, that nonplussed look. “Where?”