Chapter Thirteen

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Chapter Thirteen

Night was minutes away from falling over the woods, the sun little more than a bright orange line on the western horizon. On the opposite side of the sky, a thin sickle moon hovered above the forest.

"Come on, " Fey muttered to the pile of twigs and leaves in front of her. "Light, damn you!”

She had thought she’d known what despair felt like after Derrick and the other cubs had died. Despite Zave’s comforting words earlier, their fate still haunted her, and she suspected they always would. But then, as she’d watched Glenn be taken by the thunderbird, her spirits had sunk to depths she hadn’t even believed possible. She and Zave were alone. What were they supposed to do without their leader? Fey didn't even know where they were. The very thought that the two of them were stranded in the middle of some nameless forest, lost and alone except for a living nightmare that terrorized the skies, caused her chest to seize up with panic.

How are you so unprepared for this? the annoyingly logical voice in her head needled her. He wasn't your alpha, and he never pretended to be. Your safety was never his responsibility.

Fey had dumped the entire burden of leadership on him, she realized. Not only had that not been fair to Glenn, especially after the tragedy he had experienced only two days before, but it had left her woefully unready to shoulder that responsibility herself. Now she was paying the price. A whole day had passed in sheer panic, with her and Zave running this way and that with no sense of direction, like the proverbial headless chicken. A whole day that could have been spent coming up with a plan, or reuniting with Clueless and the others.

Instead, the best she had done was find enough dry wood that, with any luck, she could turn into a halfway decent campfire. She rubbed the sticks together, cursing herself with each heartbeat until, finally, a thin trail of smoke rose from the kindling and flames sprang into existence.

"Idiot!" Zave spat in disgust.

Fey looked up at him, a sharp remark already on the tip of her tongue, but the young man wasn't looking at her. He was huddled up with himself, his face buried so deep in his arms that Fey wasn't sure he had even noticed the fire.

"Zave?" she asked.

He looked up at her, eyes red and baggy as if he'd been awake for a week. "This is all my fault. I should have seen it before it happened. I should have done something to stop it! I'm sorry, Fey."

As the fire grew, lighting up more of the small clearing they had turned into their camp, fear wrapped its icy hand around Fey's heart.

"Then Glenn…" she said slowly. "You…You've seen him…"

He looked at her, uncomprehending.

"You've seen him…dead?" she forced herself to say.

"No, I haven't had any visions," Zave answered. For a moment, his eyes inched toward the campfire, but then snapped back to look at Fey. "But what would be the point? You don't really think the thunderbird would carry him off like that and not kill him, do you?"

Fey took a deep breath. No, she didn't think that. The very idea sounded childishly naive. Still…

"What I think," she said, surprising herself with how steady her voice sounded, "is that you don't leave things like that up to assumptions. Especially not when you have the tools to find out for sure."

Zave hesitated, and then reluctantly turned to look at the fire. For a few seconds nothing happened—but then his eyes seemed to grow larger. Not wider, larger. As if both his eyes and his eye sockets were actually increasing in size to better absorb the firefight. Fey wasn't sure if Zave was aware of the change, and she didn't want to bring it up. He had enough on his plate without her making him afraid of his own body too. But that didn't stop her from shivering every time it happened.

Prepare for the worst, common sense told her. Don't raise your hopes just to break—

"He's alive!" Zave exclaimed.

Fey went rigid.

He looked at her, his eyes returning to normal. "Fey, Glenn's alive! I- I don't know why or how, but…"

"Alive," Fey whispered, that faint flame of hope reigniting in her chest yet again.

Suddenly, everything came crashing down on her. The situation she and Zave were in. The responsibility that now rested on her shoulders. And most importantly, what she had to do next.

Right, she thought, sitting up straighter, no more feeling sorry for myself!

"Of course he's alive," giving Zave a smile she didn't really feel. "Glenn wouldn't let that stupid bird kill him that easily."

Zave looked at her, exhausted and confused.

"And we're going to get him back," the goat-walker went on. "We know where it took him. We just have to get there. We're good at that, right? We made it halfway across the country while being chased by wendigos, after all."

"I guess," Zave said slowly. "But what about Clueless?"

"Ember's definitely made it to the plane crash by now," Fey reasoned. "As much as I hate to admit it, she's smart enough to do that. That means she's picked up our trail. I wish we could wait for them to catch up, but we can at least be confident that they're following behind us."

A cool wind blew through the woods, rattling the leaves above them, and Zave shivered—not from fear, Fey realized, but because his clothes were still drenched from being in the rain all day. The heat from the campfire made thin trails of steam rise from the wet fabric, but she could tell just by looking at him that he was in for an uncomfortable night. Unless…

"Our only order of business right now," she said decisively, "is to get a good night's rest so that we can set off first thing tomorrow morning. And to do that, you need to get out of those clothes."

Zave's head snapped up to look at her in shock. Fey knew how he felt. She could hardly believe what she had just heard, and she'd been the one to say it!

Her cheeks burned beneath her fur, but she stayed firm. "They're wet and freezing, and you'll catch pneumonia if you try to sleep in them, Zave, so get them off and let them dry by the fire."

Zave reflexively raised one hand to his shirt, and he shook his head. "I…I can't…"

"Why not?" Fey said, giving a nonchalant shrug. "If you hadn't noticed, skinwalkers don't exactly put a lot of value in clothes. Glenn and I have been running around without them for two days now, and you haven't complained."

"That's different," Zave said in a strangled voice. "I'm not a skinwalker!"

"So what? You really think having fur matters that much to someone like me? Nature gave you the body you need, and that's all we care about. Besides…" She gave him a sly grin. "I know you've been sneaking glances whenever you think I'm not looking."

Zave's eyes widened and his skin turned pale.

Wait, she thought, a pit forming in her stomach, does that mean he has been sneaking glances at me?

She cleared her throat. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Stop making this awkward and just take them off already!"

Slowly, moving like his blood had frozen inside his veins, Zave obeyed. He raised his shirt up and over his head, baring his chest for her, and then laid it on the ground next to the fire. Despite everything she'd said about not caring about clothes, Fey felt her heart start to beat faster. Zave wasn't exactly athletic, but he had the body of someone who worked on their feet for a living. She herself had worked at a pet store before all this began, but she'd never asked what he did. Maybe she should.

Stubbornly not making eye contact, Zave stood up and unbuckled his pants, letting them fall to the forest floor too. He left his boxers on, despite them being as wet as everything else, but Fey got the sense that asking him to take those off would be the straw that broke this particular camel's back.

"There, see?" she said with a smile as he tentatively sat back down. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

He didn't reply. Looking at him from across the campfire, she could see vulnerability shining in his eyes—and yet, at the same time, she got the sense that he felt safe too. As if he knew exactly what kind of danger they were in, but as long as he was with Fey, he genuinely believed that none of those dangers could touch him.

"Well," she said, lying down on her back and looking up at the stars. God, it felt good to be able to see those again after two straight days of nothing but gray clouds. "Let's get some sleep. Lots to do tomorrow."

With that she closed her eyes and, to her own surprise, felt a wave of peace wash over her. It was as if, by putting on a brave face for Zave, the strength she'd pretended to have had somehow become real. With the faint warmth of the campfire dancing across her, she could almost believe that rescuing Glenn would be as easy as she'd made it sound. The thunderbird was terrifying, but they were far from helpless themselves. Maybe it was time they started acting like it.

The sound of a shuddering breath made Fey's long ear twitch, and she opened her eyes to see Zave huddled up with himself again, shivering despite the campfire. She sat up, concerned. She'd hoped that taking off his wet clothes would be enough to warm him up, but it looked like she had underestimated the warmth that her fur was giving her. Well, there was only one thing to do about that.

She stood up and, on silent hooves, walked around the campfire to where Zave was lying. She moved so quietly that when she laid down beside him and pressed herself against him, he gasped in surprise.

"What are—" he demanded.

"Shh," she whispered, wrapping her arms around him from behind. "We're just sharing our body warmth. Skinwalkers do it all the time."

That much was true. She couldn't count the nights she had laid in a big pile of bodies and fur with her old pack, toasty and content even on the most frigid of winter nights. But there was something about lying here with Zave that felt different. Almost like—

Shut up, she snapped at herself. He's cold, and I can make him warm. That's all this is.

Although, it does feel nice to have him—

THAT'S ALL IT IS!

Zave didn't complain. In fact, he cuddled up a little closer to her. With Fey pressed up against his back, her fur more than enough to ward off the night's cold for them both, he raised a hand and took one of Fey's in it.

Then, feeling more right than she had in years, Fey drifted off to dreamless sleep.

NEXT CHAPTER: 2/5/2025