Forever

What now, what now?

I was torn by the unknown.

Sam.

I jerked. Recognition rang through me.

Sam, are you listening?

Then, clearly, an image. The wolves running down the road, freedom ahead, and something — something menacing behind.

I swiveled my ears, trying to find the direction of the information. I turned back to the vehicle; my gaze was met by the young man’s steady one. Again, I got the image, even more clearly this time. Danger coming. The pack pelting down the road. I took the image, honed it, threw it to the other wolves.

Grace’s head instantly snapped up from where she was doing my job: keeping a wolf from wandering back into the trees. Across two dozen moving bodies, I met her gaze and held it for the briefest of moments.

In my paws, I could feel the vibration of something unfamiliar. Something approaching.

Grace tossed another image to me. A suggestion. The pack, me at the head, leading them away from whatever threat promised to arrive from behind us. Her alongside, driving them after me.

I couldn’t mistrust that image being sent to me from the car, because it came with this, again and again: Sam. And that made it all right, even if I couldn’t quite hold the entire concept of it in my head.

I sent an image to the pack. Not a request. An order: us moving. Them following me.

By all rights, the orders should have been given by Paul, the black wolf, and any others punished for their subordination.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, we broke into a run, nearly simultaneously. It was like we were on a hunt, only whatever we chased was too far away to see.

Every wolf listened to me.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

COLE

It was working.

The moment I started to follow in the Volkswagen, though, they scattered and it took them a long moment to regroup. It was almost dawn; we didn’t have the time for them to get used to the car. So I got out, tossing images as best I could — I was getting better, though I had to be close — and I ran on foot. Not stupidly close to them; I stayed on the shoulder of the road mostly, to keep my bearings, and they were dozens of yards away. I just tried to stay close enough to keep tabs on their direction. I couldn’t believe I’d cursed their slowness before. If they’d been more focused, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Instead, here I was, running with them, almost part of the pack again, as they coursed along under the waning moonlight. I wasn’t sure what would happen when I got tired. Right now, fueled by adrenaline, I couldn’t imagine it.

And I had to say, even as a cynic, it was something to see the wolves, leaping and jumping and ducking and surging with each other. And it was something else again to see Sam and Grace.

I was able to send images to Sam, sure, but it obviously took an effort for him to understand. Sam and Grace, on the other hand, both wolves, with their connection — Sam would barely turn his head and Grace would fall back to encourage a wolf that had stopped to investigate a fascinating smell. Or Grace would intercept one of my images and translate it for Sam with a flick of her tail, and suddenly they would have changed directions as I wanted them to. And always, as they ran, though there was an urgency to the pack, Sam and Grace were touching, nosing, bumping against each other. Everything they had as humans translated.

Here was the problem, though: North of Boundary Wood, there was a large, flat tract of land covered only with scrub trees. As long as the wolves were crossing it to the next stretch of woods, they were easy targets. I’d driven past it before, and it hadn’t seemed like too wide of an area. But that was me in a car going fifty-eight miles an hour. Now we were on foot going maybe six, eight miles an hour. And the edge of the horizon was pinking as the sun contemplated coming up.

Too soon. Or maybe we were too late. The scrub stretched out for miles ahead of us. There was no way that the wolves would be across it by the time the sun came up. The only thing I could hope for was that the helicopter was slow to get started. That it started on the far side of Boundary Wood and was more concerned with why there didn’t seem to be any wolves in it anymore. If we were lucky, that would be how it worked. If the world were fair.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

ISABEL

By the time I found the Volkswagen, abandoned in the parking lot by the lake, it was dawn. I swore at Cole for leaving Sam’s phone behind, for leaving the car behind, but then I saw that the pack had left cluttered tracks in the dew. More wolf prints than I’d ever seen before. How many was that? Ten wolves? Twenty? The brush was beaten down where they’d waited, and then the prints led back out to the road. Like the journal had said. Heading up 169.

I was so pumped to know that I was on the right track that I didn’t realize, at first, what it meant that I could see the tracks so clearly. The sun was coming up, which meant we were running out of time. No, we were already out of time, unless the wolves were well away from the woods. There was a big, ugly stretch of alien wasteland on 169 leading out of Boundary Wood and Mercy Falls. If the wolves got caught there, they’d be totally exposed to my father and his enterprising rifle.

All I could think was that things would be fine if only I could get to the wolves. So I sent the SUV speeding down the road. I was freezing, I realized; even though it wasn’t that cold, just normal early-morning chill, I couldn’t seem to keep warm. I cranked up the heater and gripped the steering wheel. I didn’t pass any traffic — who would be out on this hick road at dawn except for wolves and the people hunting them, anyway? I wasn’t sure which category that put me in.

And there, suddenly, were the wolves. In the half-light of dawn, they were dark spots against the scrubby ground, only presenting themselves as different shades of gray and black when I got closer. Of course, they were smack-dab in the middle of the alien wasteland, strung out in a long, orderly line, two and three across, perfect targets. As I got closer, I saw the wolf that was Grace up at the front — no way could I forget the shape of her body and the length of her legs and the way she carried her head — and next to her, Sam. I saw a white wolf, and for a brief, confused moment, thought it was Olivia. But then I remembered, and realized it must be Shelby, the crazy wolf that had followed us to the clinic so long ago. The other wolves were strangers to me. Just wolves.

And there, far ahead of me, running by the side of the road, a human. The low sun stretched his shadow out one hundred times taller than him. Cole St. Clair, running alongside the wolves, sidestepping debris on the roadside every so often and sometimes jumping the ditch for a few strides and then back again. He held his arms out for balance as he leaped, unself-conscious, like a boy. There was something so fiercely big about the gesture of Cole running with the wolves that it made the last thing I said to him ring in my ears. Shame warmed me when nothing else could.