“Tabarnac,” the man cursed. “What are you doing here?”
Alex scrambled to her feet. “You killed those wolves,” she said, voice shaking. “You killed them.”
The poacher’s eyes narrowed. In that moment, he looked a thousand times more deadly than any wolf. He could have been about her father’s age, perhaps a bit younger; his green eyes were utterly without warmth, the deeply lined skin around them harsh as weathered stone under his fur cap.
“Did you follow me?” he asked. So deceptively soft, his voice—so strangely gentle. But Alex knew it was false.
He had killed Shadow’s parents, and now he was after Shadow himself.
Run, she urged her wolf. Run away. I’ll give you time—
“I… didn’t know you were here,” she told the, man, pushing the words past the lump in her throat. “I got lost. My grandparents’ cabin isn’t far from here, but I took the wrong way.”
Shouldering his rifle, the man knelt in front of her and cupped her chin in his hand. She wanted to wrench free, but she held very still.
“Didn’t they ever teach you how dangerous these woods are?” he asked.
She met his gaze, shivering. The man shook his head.. “Foolish child.” He looked up, cocking his head to listen. “I’d take you home, but I have quarry to pursue—”
“You aren’t supposed to hunt the wolves.” The words were out of Alex’s mouth before she could stop them. Any trace of gentleness in the man’s attitude vanished. He dropped his hand and rose, staring down at her.
“Wolves,” he repeated. “What do you know about them?” Suddenly he bent toward her and caught her by the shoulder. “Do you know what they are? What they do?” His fingers squeezed, and Alex bit her lip to keep from showing any pain. “Did you see the other—a young black one?”
“No. No wolves.” She glared up at him. “Let me go.”
He released her with a little push and looked away. “I see the anger in your eyes, child,” he said. “As if you knew the pain of the world. But I had to do it. I’m the only one who can. It’s the duty given to me. No one else believes. No one else knows—” He broke off. “They must die. There is no other way.”
Alex stared at him, sickened and fighting not to show it. Fear choked her as she made herself walk past the man to the dead wolves. She knelt beside them, reaching out but not daring to touch the thick dark fur, so much like Shadow’s.
Run, Shadow. Run far away from here.
She waited for the poacher to order her to leave and wondered what she would do. She didn’t know how she could delay him, stop him from hunting Shadow. She felt numb—too numb to find her way home, to move, even to speak.
Brush crackled behind her. When she looked around, the man was gone. She thought then that she was alone.
She was wrong. Someone was watching her from behind the basswood tree. Someone she knew in her heart.
“Shadow,” she whispered thickly.
Leaves trembled and branches swayed. A figure moved, flowed forward into the interwoven pattern of earth, dying leaves, and fading sunlight.
Not Shadow, but the boy. The boy she’d left behind. He’d followed her and circled around to the other side of the clearing. She stared at him, desperate, praying he was Shadow’s friend as he claimed. That he would help her.
But he didn’t see her at all. His gaze was locked on the dead wolves, his face white as birch bark.
Alex wet her lips. “Kieran?”
His mouth worked, but only a moan came from deep inside him. All her own sorrow was in that sound, and a thousand times more. He began to shake uncontrollably, fists clenching and unclenching.
Alex threw off her own numbness. “You knew them too,” she said.
Kieran seemed not to hear. He walked with short, fitful steps to stand between the wolves and spread his hands to either side, as if he could draw them up from death. And then he fell to his knees. He crawled to the black wolf, stretched his body alongside it, looped his long arms around the maned neck. His black hair mingled with the animal’s coarse fur, indistinguishable.