Aviva
The pack house is always full to the brim. Four impossibly long tables and benches rest in the center of the wide, wood-lined space in rows where not a single seat is unaccounted for. Children dart from group to group, finding friends to play with while their parents dine.
I’m at my usual spot at the head of the left-most table, surrounded by the other young, mated, new mothers while our mates move from group to group of men, chatting over pints of home-brewed ale.
I bounce Lexa in my lap as I fork another piece of meat into my mouth, glancing down the table where Misty and Cole are seated together, unaccustomed to the noisy, damn near riotous shared evening meal.
Misty seems especially affected, which strikes me as odd, given that she spent two weeks here last year before she went back to school… but that was before everything happened.
Her eyes are empty, which worries me.
I thought I was the only one having an existential crisis, but apparently… I’m not. Freya leans over, patting her son Sam’s back. “She’s different, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think she’s been feeling well,” I reply under my breath as Ryan comes up behind me to give me a sloppy kiss on the cheek before scooping Lexa out of my arms. She grunts her disapproval, but she knows by now there’s no use in complaining. Her cries of displeasure at being separated from me will fade into the incessant chatter of the room, and everyone loves to see their princess, regardless of her opinions on the matter.
Freya smiles as Ryan and Lexa disappear in the crowd, but then her eyes scan my profile. “Have you talked to her about it?”
“About what, exactly?”
One of the other mothers at the table leans in with a quick tilt of her head toward Misty. “She has a serious case of the baby blues, Luna.”
I nod because it’s all I can do. I already know it’s more than that. Misty’s vibrancy is gone–staunched like water to flame. Her razor sharp edges are chipped. I can see it in her eyes.
I can see it in Cole’s eyes, too, as he tries to engage her in conversation. His worry is palpable, which gives me an idea about where I need to begin to fix this.
I set my fork down before leaning over to tickle Sam under his fat chin. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
“Where are you going so soon?” Freya complains with a scoff. “You barely touched your food!”
“I’m going hunting tonight, Mother,” I tease, rolling my eyes as Freya scowls. “I don’t want a full stomach slowing me down.”
“But you’ll still come by my loom class in the morning?”
“Absolutely not.” I give Freya a dazzling smile that only makes her scowl grow, but I’m beyond caring. Freya knows me better than to expect me being mated and a mother to have changed me on a biological level. My fingers don’t long for the loom. My body can’t sit still for that long, either.
I’m better suited to what I’ve always done best–killing things. For food… and fun, of course.
“Be careful out there!” Freya calls out. “There was a report of a hellhound nearby!”
“The hellhound should be more worried about me!” I call back, but my voice is absorbed by the cascade of conversation pinging from one side of the room to the other.
I head for the door, hooking my arm around Ryan’s, pulling him away from a conversation regarding some water wheel apparatus some of the guys are constructing near the lake.
“Did you even eat?” he asks, switching Lexa to his other arm to prevent her from tangling her fists in my hair in an attempt to get to me instead.
“Doesn’t matter,” I rush out, pulling him to a stop just outside the pack house. “Your sister is really going through it, Ryan. You need to talk to Cole.”
Ryan’s cocky smile fades immediately. “What do you mean?”
“Somethings wrong with her. She’s so sad.”
“I picked up on that,” he says under his breath. “Cole and I talked–”
“So you have talked to him about it?”
“The last time I was in Crescent Falls, when he and Sydney pitched the idea of sending Cole to Eastonia to train with a healer. I was the one who suggested they come here, and he told me he was starting to worry about Misty.”
“Worry how?” I press.
Ryan, being of the male variety, shrugs, “She’s just not herself.”
“Okay, elaborate!” Men. I swear.
“We didn’t really get into it.”
I point to the door to the pack house. “Misty’s going hunting with me tonight, and you’re going to talk to Cole about her and gather some information. I want details from his point of view.”
Ryan huffs, giving me an exasperated look. “What do you want me to say to the guy?”
“What would you want to know about me if I wasn’t feeling well? If I wasn’t myself?” I give him a little shove toward the door. “I’ll reward you for it later.”
“Reward?” he tosses me a wry smile. “Elaborate–”
“Get in there and send her out. I want to get going.”
Lexa gives me the most furious look as Ryan carries her back inside, and I wait, and wait, and wait for Misty to come out… but she doesn’t.
It’s Mercy slipping through the door instead, her dark green eyes shining in the moonlight as she shakes her head. “She’s not coming tonight. She wants to sleep. Be careful, okay?”
I nod, resigned, and turn from the pack house, grabbing my halter and bow where I’d left them hanging over a lantern post.
I know why I’m tangled up about Misty. It has more to do with caring about her, if that makes sense. I love her. She’s a sister to me, metaphorically and literally because I’m married to her brother, but we went to war together. I fought by her side. I watched her get sucked through a portal to a place she hasn’t spoken about yet. I stayed upright long enough to bring her back. I was with her in the days that followed, but even then, she hadn’t been like this.
It’s a good distraction from my own anxiety, I guess.
I break into a sprint and shift, tearing toward the mountains. I pass the lake and hot springs in a blur of dark woods and moonlight with no direction in mind, only the knowledge that a hunting party came home this morning with a report of seeing a hellhound thirty miles north of Silverhide, and there is no way I am letting an opportunity like this pass me by.
I descend into the valleys behind Silverhide, racing deeper into the forest, following the scent the hunters’ left behind on their return.
It’s fully night when I reach their old camp. I pick up Jacob’s scent first, likely when he’d gone out on patrol and spotted the hellhound, but he didn’t go that far from camp to begin with, it seems. They got an elk. The remnant of blood and silver skin from the butchering are still evident as I pick through the forest.
The smell of blood lessens the further I travel from camp, mingling with a new scent–something even more metallic–magic.
The hunters weren’t lying about seeing a hellhound.
Because there was a hellhound.
Only, it’s dead now.
I shift back into my usual form and adjust my dress in a rush, my mind spinning over the figure lying still in front of me. Warmth radiates from its mutated form. This hellhound is more wolf-like than the others I’ve seen. Almost a cross between a rogue and a regular shifter; its body is lean and strong, but its facial features are all wrong. Its eyes are huge and extremely far apart. Its mouth is wide open, three rows of razor sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight.
Its magic pours from its broken body, but I can’t figure out where it was injured. In fact, it’s in one piece. No blood seeps from its skin, and normally hellhounds–which can easily be hundreds of years old–dissolve into ash when they die, but this one… something’s odd about this one.
A flicker of panic skitters through my mind as I instinctively look for green-hued magic but don’t see anything that color.
But there’s still a smell I don’t recognize. Some kind of herb… something spicy and extremely pungent to be sticking around despite the warm breeze whispering through the trees.
I edge toward the hellhound, wondering if it might still be alive, a second too late. Its body begins to cave in on itself, its skin falling away, bones turning to dust.
I lean on my bow and watch the breeze carry the last remnants of the hellhound away but notice something odd about the area where it was just lying.
The ground here is… wrong. I’m standing in a clearing where new-growth trees fan out in all directions, creating a circle of spindly aspen and alder. Beyond that, the trees are absolutely ancient, towering dozens of feet above my head.
This place–this circle–is new. Something used to rest here–a building. A temple, perhaps.
Excitement blurs my senses as I begin to search for ruins, ignoring the prickle of unease making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
A twig snaps nearby, followed by the scurrying of something larger than a rabbit but smaller than a wolf, and I jerk back to reality.
I just found a hellhound, dead. It wasn’t injured. Something killed it, but how? They don’t just die of old age. They’re immortal souls trapped in bodies mutated by magic–bodies that never belonged to them in the first place.
Nothing about this place feels right, and I decide I’m not sticking around to find out why.
I wish Misty had come with me and been able to use her powers to show me exactly what happened here. I’ll convince her to come back with me, one way or another.
On my way back to Silverhide I grab a few rabbits just to bring something home, but by the time I reach our house on the outskirts of the village, the moon is dipping back toward the horizon, and another day is about to begin.
I leave the rabbits hanging on the deck and creep into the house to find Ryan awake and sipping coffee on the couch. I pause in the doorway, furrowing my brow. “Did you… wait up for me?”
“You know I don’t sleep much when you’re away,” he says, taking another sip. “Lexa’s still asleep by some miracle. I think she accepted the fact you weren’t going to be up with her every hour tonight.”
“She’ll be strapped to my back all day today,” I say, feeling slightly guilty but unsure how to tell him about what I found. “Uhm, did Jacob say they saw a live hellhound or a dead one?”
“Live,” Ryan replies, narrowing his eyes at me. “Why?
“Because I found it, and it wasn’t alive anymore.” I pour myself a cup of coffee. “It was very dead.”
Silence swells between us for the space of several breaths before Ryan rises with a groan and saunters over to me. Dressed in nothing but a pair of navy blue boxers and a fitted gray shirt, his massive frame flexes as he sidles up to the table and leans his thigh against it, reaching out to brush a lock of hair away from my face before cupping my cheek.
I can see the words unsaid in his eyes. He doesn’t want to deal with any more threats. He’s trying his hardest not to care that a fucking hellhound, of all things, died mysteriously only thirty miles north of our pack.
An easy year.
That’s all we wanted.
“Take a shower with me,” he orders, his eyes darkening a shade. “You have sticks in your hair.”