Chapter 3. Found Like Last Time

June's POV

I swam.

Not with arms. With four legs, kicking hard against the current, and a body that wasn't mine and was more mine than anything had ever been. My head broke the surface. I sucked in a breath of air that smelled like a thousand things at once.

Wet moss. Pine resin. Fish. Mud. Smoke from Ashgrove's torches, far behind me.

I could smell.

For eleven years, the world had smelled flat to me. I'd thought that was normal for a girl with no wolf. Now it hit me all at once, so loud and rich that I nearly went under again.

Swim, the voice said again. Calmer this time. Cry later.

I swam.

* * *

The far bank was steep and muddy. I dragged myself up it on shaking legs and collapsed in the ferns.

For a long time, I just breathed.

Then I looked down.

Two front paws, gray as wood smoke. A pale patch of fur on my chest, curved like a thin moon. Behind me, a long dark tail lying in the mud.

Hello, she said softly.

I knew her. I'd known her since I was nine years old, lying in bed while my mother sang, when something warm had curled up under my heart and said my name for the first time. Then the river took my parents, and she went silent, and I'd spent eleven years believing I'd imagined her.

Who are you? I asked. Not out loud. Inside.

Sorrel.

Where have you been?

A long pause.

Asleep, she said. I couldn't wake up. Something kept pushing me down. Another pause, tired and puzzled. I don't know what. Not yet.

Something. Not a curse. Not a broken girl. Something.

I thought of the note against my skin, and I didn't let myself finish the thought.

Across the river, the howls had gone quiet. Nobody had followed me into the water. Nobody would cross into the Reach at night. The Reach: the strip of wild land between Ashgrove and the mountain packs. Rogue land. Nobody's land.

Mine, for tonight.

Can we run? I asked. Just for a minute.

Sorrel didn't answer. She just stood up on four shaking legs, and we ran.

Not away from anything. Just ran. Up a moonlit slope, with the wind in our fur and the earth springing under our paws. Every muscle singing. Every breath full.

My whole life, I had walked with my head down.

Then the wind changed.

And I smelled blood.

* * *

Wolf, Sorrel said. Dying.

I should have run the other way. Any sane runaway would have.

But I was the Keeper. The dying had been my job since I was ten. When someone was hurt, it was me they sent for.

My paws moved before I could argue.

He was lying in a hollow under a split oak, half shifted. A young man, maybe my age, with a wolf's ears and a human face, and a wound in his side that had torn him open from ribs to hip.

Sorrel couldn't hold the shape anymore. My body cracked and twisted back into my own. I was naked, shaking, kneeling in the leaves beside a stranger.

I didn't care.

"Hey," I said, pressing both hands to the wound. "Look at me. Stay with me."

His eyes fluttered open. Dark brown, glazed with pain. A braided cord around his wrist, with a small iron charm shaped like a mountain peak. A handheld radio lay in the leaves beside him, cracked, hissing static.

"Who did this?" I asked.

"Couldn't… smell them," he whispered. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. "No scent. Like… ghosts."

The world was still around me.

"Which way did they go?"

He didn't answer. His hand found my wrist and squeezed once, weak as a child's. His eyes went to the radio.

"Peak Four," he whispered. "Tell him… Peak Four. Tell him… they're back."

"I will. I promise. What's your name?"

"Tobin."

"Tobin. I'm June. I'm here. You're not alone."

He looked at me like that mattered. Then the breath went out of him, and it didn't come back.

I stayed with my hands on his side until the blood stopped moving under my palms. Then, because it was the only thing I knew how to do, I closed his eyes and folded his arm across his chest.

That was when I heard them.

Footsteps. Many of them, fast and quiet through the trees. Wolves who knew this forest.

They came out of the dark on all sides at once. Six huge wolves, and three men on two legs with crossbows.

They saw Tobin.

They saw me, naked, kneeling over his body, red to the elbows.

One of the wolves made a sound I'll never forget. A low, broken howl. The kind a wolf makes for family.

"Get away from him!"

The man at the front was big and dark-bearded, with a scar through one eyebrow. His crossbow was aimed at my heart. His hands were steady. His face was not.

"I found him," I said. My voice cracked. "He was already—"

"Hands where I can see them!"

I lifted them. Blood dripped from my fingers.

A tall woman with a warrior's braid stepped out of the line and sniffed the air. Frowned. Sniffed again.

"Garrick," she said slowly. "She doesn't smell like anything."

The bearded man's jaw tightened.

"Then she smells exactly like the ones who did this."

The woman threw her coat at me. "Cover yourself." Not kind. Not cruel. Just tired.

"Silver on her wrists," Garrick said. "If she shifts, shoot her in the leg."

The chain hissed against my skin. I bit my lip until I tasted blood so I wouldn't scream.

Behind me, they lifted Tobin, gently, the way you lift something you love.

And the memory hit me so hard my knees almost buckled. Eleven years ago, on another riverbank, men had found a girl kneeling in the dark with blood to her elbows and no other scent in the air. They'd decided what she was in less than a minute.

It was happening again.

Then, from the leaves at my feet, Tobin's radio crackled.

A man's voice came through the static. Low. Flat. Very controlled.

"Peak Four. Report."

Nobody moved.

"Tobin. Answer me."

Garrick bent down and picked up the radio. His thumb hovered over the button for a long moment before he pressed it.

"It's Garrick," he said. His voice was rough. "Tobin's dead, Ronan. We've got the one who did it."

Silence on the other end. So long I thought the signal had gone.

Then the voice came back. Quieter. Colder.

"Alive?"

Garrick looked at me. "Alive."