Chapter 23

“Yes?” Ti says to the knock on the Boathouse door.

“Is Quicksilver there?” asks a tremulous voice.

Ti opens the door and says nothing. Just stares at the naked man standing at the bottom of the stairs, shuffling in the snow.

“Hey, Kyle,” I say, pulling off my thick socks. “Come on in while I get ready.”

Ti glowers furiously at the naked man now standing in our quarters. Kyle’s head drops nearly to his chest, his hands fold over his crotch, his toes point in. He looks just like one of Leonora’s illustrations of human submission. Except those are never naked. Humans are funny that way.

I pull off my sweater and T-shirt. “Where should we go?”

Kyle mumbles something to the effect of “grumptlywatch?”

Ti doesn’t say a word, just stands there, his huge arms folded over his massive chest, his bare foot rapping an angry ptt!…ptt!…ptt!…ptt! against the floor.

Quickly peeling off my jeans and underwear, I squeeze past the scowling bulkhead. “I won’t hunt anything big, okay? So I’ll be back in time for dinner?”

Ti’s nose flares, and a soft growl rattles around his throat until I pull at the collar of his fleece with one hand, then at his head with the other. I kiss him full on his lips, and his hand runs slowly over my naked shoulder and down my spine and around the curve of my ass. He holds me tight against him so that I feel exactly what I’m leaving behind. “It’s just a run, Ti,” I whisper. “It’s what wolves do.”

Kyle stumbles as quickly as he can down the stairs and toward the snow-dusted forest. I will watch over him in his change so no coyote eats him when he’s vulnerable. He will do the same for me.

In the silence of a run, we move as one. Under the snow, we feel the decline toward the moose wallow and swerve together. We smell the tree where a buck rubbed the velvet of his antlers and move closer. We follow the ragged ends of low branches that mark the beginnings of the deer’s browse line. We hear an unusual noise upwind and turn, ready to fight or hunt.

Kyle skids straight into a wall of black wolf.

Ti towers over Kyle, his lips curled back again from those sharp teeth. Kyle pulls everything in that can be pulled in—ears, tail, legs, chin, balls—before creeping backward. I slide my muzzle next to his, because Kyle shouldn’t be bullied, but he stinks of salt and old leather and is already skittering away.

Ti watches until the last trace of Kyle’s fur has vanished deep in the trees. He turns in that awkward, shuffling crappy-wolf way and stands beside me. Pushing off with my front legs, I give him a big, open-jawed kiss. He gives me a sidelong glance and squares his already broad shoulders.

And I run. Even with only three legs, I’m fast enough to make Ti work for it. He falters and gets up and falters again. I swat him in the face with my tail to remind him that his tail shouldn’t be dragged behind like toilet paper on the bottom of his shoe.

It’s not until we reach the upper slopes that he is at my shoulder, following and leading as we thread our way through the beeches and hemlocks.

The sky is gray with the promise of the first real snow of the season, one of those thick snows that generous nature uses to cover and protect wolves when they sleep. For now, the flakes sit like powdered sugar on top of branches and leaves and on the dried heads of grasses the color of old bronze. The snow erupts around us in little flurries when I jump on him and tumble to the side. I run away and then turn back, running toward him, and he rears on his hind legs, coming down, covering my back, and dragging his teeth gently, gently across my ear.

He bounds, jumping so high in the air that he bumps a branch above him. A tiny kinglet complains, and snow lands on Ti’s face. I rub it off with my muzzle. He corners a fisher, which is always a bad idea, and the foul-tempered rodent bites him. He holds his leg up to me, and when I finish debriding it, he props his head on top of mine.

Finally, we make it past the High Pines and the Krummholz to the scrubbed, mottled stone right under the heavy gray sky. Ti collapses on his back, and I flop down next to him, my nose buried in his fur. I breathe deeply, luxuriating in the scent of crushed bone and evergreen and damp fur, totally free of any hint of steel or carrion. And when I put my head to his chest, I no longer hear the slow, shallow sounds of the man in the wolf suit, because Ti has discovered the depth of his lungs and the strength of his heart.

He stretches his neck out long, looking out toward the upside-down horizon. I think…I think he means for me to take it, but I hesitate, because the last time didn’t turn out well. Still, he holds his chin high as though he’s waiting, so very carefully, I put my teeth on either side of his throat. It’s what we do, and it means trust me. It means I see you at your most vulnerable and will not hurt you.

He tenses slightly but doesn’t move.

I rub against his jaw, and he rubs against mine, and I keep going until I am covered in his scent. I rub against the stones and scratch into the earth, advertising to everyone that he and I were here together. Wild.

I throw back my head and howl. A handful of howls respond from the misty dark violet down below.

From the black wolf beside me, there is only a polite cough.

I wish we could stay longer, but we really can’t, because tonight is the New Moon, which all wolves avoid because, even wild, it’s hard to see on an overcast night with no moon.

As soon as we’re outside the Boathouse, I plop down on the cold ground and pull my shoulders back. After the squishy cacophony of the change, my skin settles against the cold, brittle ground.

Ti hasn’t changed. He is rolling his shoulders and shaking his massive head and jumping in all sorts of peculiar ways. As soon as I have my voice back, I squat next to him, suggesting various combinations of rolling and stretching and folding and curving that we use to get the phase started, but nothing works. Every time he emerges from a fold or curve or stretch or roll, he looks at his still fur-covered paw with disgust.

Left outside naked in the snow and dark, I feel my body starting to get cold, so I head inside with Ti following sullenly behind. I squat down and take his big head between my hands, rubbing my cheek against his muzzle. “I love you like this, and I swear on my own wolf that you will never be chained again. But I love the man who thinks he’s human too, and I need you to let him come to me now.”

He rolls his shoulders distractedly, like a child shrugging out of a jacket, then trots back and forth, his claws clacking against the floor.

Fingering my clothes distractedly, I decide to leave them where they are and turn off the lights. Inside under the new moon, it is pitch-black except for the still-glowing lucidum of Ti’s hypersensitive eyes. Staring at the glowing green pools, I lie back on our bed and begin retracing all the paths that Ti’s hands have traced on my body. I start in earnest, running my finger across my chin and up to my bottom lip, gently opening it and slipping my finger inside across my fangs. I suck it deeply into my welcoming mouth. With a pop, I pull the finger out and trace cool circles around my nipples until they stand upright, hard as apple seeds.

A soft sigh from a damp nose hits my arm.

My hand drifts lower in those long, languorous strokes. My fingers are cooler than his and smaller, but closing my eyes, I work my imagination hard, trying to re-create his big, strong, warm hands moving over my hips and belly and slipping between my thighs, making my back arch like I’m going to touch the ceiling.

Invisible in the blackness of the room, the black wolf throws himself on the floor. I smile to myself at the elastic thrum of stretching muscles, the hard creak of bending bone, the slurried swish of organs changing places.

Both the bed and I groan when he jumps on me with his full weight. The dustings of black fur settle around me, and I sneeze.