Paws beat the ground at a tireless pace as the coywolf loped northward into the mountainous region of Nova Scotia. Her thoughts still danced with the words of the old white she-wolf, and they branched outward toward memories she preferred to keep hidden away. She thought of Juniper (dear June, I am not a demon), of Blind wandering forever with her sweet chirping voice and her mismatched eyes, of Myrika telling stories with auburn hair set aglow by fire. She thought of Tayui and the scars across her head, of Kiara and her pup-swollen belly, of the mysterious woman she’d lain with by the beach.

These thoughts added up to several different directions, north and south and homeward bound, but Vesper had chosen to move up into the mountains. Halcyon was second only to the woodlands and Inferni when it came to her favorite haunts, and she picked her way easily through the foothills and the rocky slopes and at last the cliffs still dusted with snow.

Her steps were guided by more than just a whim, however; a dark bird flapped overhead, a silent presence but one that she felt heavily. Perhaps Stark thought that she was going to Salsola to wreak havoc, or New Dawn and Ichika for friendlier purposes. Nevertheless, the raven refused to head back home even when she’d snapped at his tail feathers and threatened to stage an accidental death for him. He’d only gone sullen and silent at that, the arch of his wings seeming more hunched, his sleek dark body older than she’d thought it was. As many times as the creature shadowed her on her journeys now, she didn’t know him at all.

“Goat,” Stark croaked now, looking bored as he swooped lower. She could sense his hunger, however, and her stomach echoed his suggestion. Goat. She remembered chasing the creatures dumbly the first time she’d crossed this region, but now she darted among the brown rocks and spring snow near invisibly. She blended in well here, with her dark-dappled tawny coat and pale underside, and as she pressed close to the rocks, she made it silently to the herd of mountain goats. A few pregnant ones grazed at the center of the group, nibbling lichens and the conifer needles from low tree bough.

It would not be a simple task to hunt, however, and Vesper settled down on her belly among the vegetation, blue eyes watching them idly. Her feathered companion made a few sweeps of the area, silent as he rode the cold winds. Her only option would be to distract them, to chase them on more level terrain. She was surefooted, but the cloven-hoofed beasts were even more so, and they could scale angles and perch on outcroppings where she could never hope to go.

Even as she lay in wait, pale blue eyes fixated on the grazing creatures, claws came down to tug the silver ring in her ear. She thrashed her head then froze as she realized that small movement could have given her away, but none of the mountain goats seemed to notice. Her lip curled back, revealing a tooth to the raven that had swooped down to bother her, but Stark only hissed. “Wolf coming, hunting goat. Boy watching. Getting easy meal, eating leftovers.” He hobbled around at her feet then flapped off again, leaving her to ponder his suggestion.

Spoken like a true scavenger, Stark, Vesper thought with a crooked grin. She was an extremely proud creature, but her vanity did not inhibit her survival when it came to getting meals. Spending half her life as a loner taught her not to turn her nose up at abandoned carcasses. Perhaps for the first time, she wished whoever the “wolf” was luck in catching a meal.

Destiny was not kind to her or her fellow hunter, however. A tan-white shape burst from the rocks and flew toward a smaller goat, and the silent watcher almost thought he’d be able to catch the surprised nanny. However, his foreleg crumpled underneath him, and he went tumbling down the slope, his body landing in the grass only a few feet in front of her.

A pair of hot-colored eyes stared at her as she stared back, and something about his gaze was funny because her stomach clenched. When he rolled over and started cackling for no reason, however, the female leaped onto all fours and snarled, his senseless mirth spiking her fur up.

“Well, I’m glad you think it was funny,” the Optio scolded darkly. “You scared all the goddamn goats off so I can’t even get a bite.” She snorted and looked up at the circling raven, knowing that Stark was probably amused as well. Had she not put so much faith in the stranger, she would have been ready to burst from her hiding place and capture the goat he’d chased toward her.

Angry at herself, the rotten featherbrain, and the lolling male before her, the slender coywolf stamped out into the grass and plopped her rear down stubbornly. She doubted someone who was getting in a giggle fit over such a grand failure would be a danger to her. Nonetheless, she found her gaze flicking back to him, noting traces of coyote in his features and noting now the scars that adorned him. He looked like he’d gotten into a really bad scrap; something had raked blades or claws across his face and injured the leg that had betrayed him.

“You get those sliding down similar mountains?” she asked, just because she was grumpy and not thinking.

Vesper was still not quite used to random physical contact from strangers, but she had at least gotten to a place where her response was not immediately bared teeth. The nose to his shoulder caused her to tense, but she looked more carefully at him—at the old scar on his brow, at the freshly healed cuts across the rest of his face including a tattered ear. His somewhat disorienting eyes regarded her as he spoke, and she found herself ignoring his words in favor of staring at him.

His eyes—his eyes, not exactly the same color. Mismatched again. She’d thought they were both wolfy amber, a mixture of their true hues, but one was honey-yellow compared to the scarlet-orange fire of its twin. Ironic. She could not smirk, however, for the toil in her stomach. It was always the eyes that got her, and only because of his scruffy boyishness she was not immediately drawn in. Take away a pretty girl’s face, and the spell was broken, letting her true feelings of unease show through.

His apologetic but casual demeanor collapsed when she asked the question, and for a moment, she was looking at herself—arrogant, dismissive, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t hurt me a bit. Her head cocked, and she found herself smiling at him as if he were a friend she wanted to comfort. She never smiled for strangers. “No, you don’t. But you survived, and you’re all the stronger for it.” She was secretly relieved when he averted his heterochromatic eyes, but then there was a slight pinch of his brow, a crack in his voice. Was he still afraid of the attack that had rendered him injured so? Was there something else wrong?

“Perhaps not worse, but probably more,” Vesper answered honestly. She looked him over. “Mostly luperci, teeth and knives.” Plunging into her again and again, tainting her blood. She forced a chuckle, drawing out a memory that made her happy yet uncomfortable at the same time. “Though I’ve fought a bear before. I plucked its eye right of its head. It was foolish, and I would have run away had I not been protecting someone.”

She paused, looked at his troubled face. They could be brothers, she thought.

“Do you…want to talk about it, kid? It helps. Lets you know that it’s really over, talking about it, even if it’s not easy to get the words out. I owe you that much for bringing it all up anyway.”

Vesper was getting soft.

At some point, the raven had flapped off, and Vesper was glad that the burden of his gaze had been removed. She did not know how serious the bird was in reporting her for her various “misdeeds,” but she was sure he could warp the story if he wanted to make it sound like she was fraternizing with strangers for some ill-guided purpose. However, she was not, and Stark knew that, and she doubted deep in her heart that he wanted her to get in trouble. In his own strange way, she thought that the stupid bird cared about her, but she dismissed that thought. One shouldn’t care for lower animals, no matter how useful.

She was distracted by her quick search of the sky, so when the male began to stammer out his words, she almost missed them. Her ears swiveled forward again, and her heart went out to him as the story began to take shape. She remembered wanting so hard to protect Juniper way back when, back when she was only a girl, back when she killed for the first and only time. Only this attempt had resulted in the death of his lovely friend, something she doubted she could cope with; it was commendable that he’d managed to hold up under her interrogation.

He mentioned a bad leg, and her stomach did that little flip it had when she’d noticed his eyes didn’t exactly match. But she listened to the rest of his tale politely, open sympathy in her expression, until the last words broke from his lips and dropped into the thawing grass.

Vesper stared at him, her chest constricted, her stomach dropping. She rose onto all fours and stepped backwards, putting distance between the words he’d spoken as if she could outrun a black epiphany. Her tongue floundered in her mouth like a bone-dry fish before she spoke, four words wriggling from her mouth and floating terrified in the cold air.

“What did you say?”

Her ears snapped forward suddenly, and she drew her dark-tipped tail up. Her quiet little whisper reformed itself as a snapping demand.

“What did you say? What was her name?!”

“Vessie.”

Blind, Vessie thought. I’m here, sweetheart. She stared at the male, at the dual tones of his eyes, at the realization on his handsome face as her identity became clear, whatever that meant to him. It was a realization overshadowed by hers, by the confirmation.

For her mangled ear and her deafening heartbeat, she had heard correctly. Blind had fallen under the monstrous paw of the bear. She had fallen again, crumpled against a tree perhaps, little and bleeding like last time, like last time, but she had not gotten back up.

Blind died.

No. That was impossible. Friends did not die. Friends went away on fool journeys, friends abandoned her, but friends did not die. A world without the dear girl smiling somewhere in its four corners was unfathomable. It would be like a world without a species of bird or flower—able to turn, but missing something beautiful, missing that key something that one only noticed when it had vanished, that piece that made your soul complete.

She’d always thought she could go back to Blind. Someday, if she ever changed her mind and wanted to leave, to risk the branding of traitor, to pursue a life vastly different than the one now—she could find her, eventually. Her heart would tell her where she was, and the girl would come to her call, and they would be able to run somewhere new, always, forever. But now that was gone, an option she may never have considered for the rest of her days, an option she saw flash before her eyes and fade out like a winking star.

No, no no nonono, she was not dead. She was not dead. The boy had faltered in protecting someone else. Not Blind. Not her. Not her dear girl.

Denial gave way to anger.

Wickedly sharp teeth flashed as she lunged forward a step. Her growl exploded from her chest in gnashing, drooling snaps, her blue eyes narrowed to slits of blame and punishment. “It’s your fault she’s dead!” Vesper shrieked hoarsely. “You fucking coward, you could have done something to protect her—you could have done something!” She nearly wheezed, her scarred body quivering with fury as her tail lashed, as her ice eyes melted in the heat of hellfire, burn sinner, burn. “She could be standing here instead of you, she could be here and you could be rotting like you deserve. She’s done nothing wrong, nothing wrong in the whole world; she’s pure and perfect and you could have protected her!” She moved swiftly, her weight shifting forward, as if she were going to lunge for his throat and throttle him with her jaws.

But the coywolf only collapsed, crouching low to the earth and shaking as her words continued to spill out of her mouth. “You coward, you fucking coward, you could have done something,” she gasped, and she knew that she had never been addressing the male at all.

Vesper began to sob.

It was her fault; it had to somehow be her fault. She paraded around claiming to be sinless save the dark mark that was her first and only kill, but Vesper had driven the dear girl away again and again. She’d tested her own loyalties and found the she-wolf not worth it, but that was unfair to say about a creature. Was she simply strong to turn her shoulder on Blind? Or was that some hint as to the cruelty lying underneath her, lying dormant in her jaws that had strangled Oliver. One should never sacrifice everything for another on a whim…but how could you deny a living creature what would make them happiest?

The scarred woman crouched and trembled and coughed when the sobs stuck in her throat. She was unaware of the male, involved only in the thoughts that made her fiercely ache. She couldn’t help but feel responsible, but at the same time a small voice in her head was calling her ridiculous. Grief was grief, but it should not overtake a soul completely, and she’d bite anyone who broke down in front of her as she was doing.

More justified anger toward herself rose from forgotten depths. There was nothing else she can do without throwing away her happiness. And she was selfish and independent. She cared for survival overall. However, just as she formed this conclusion and began to rise, a tongue fell on her ears and a warm body pressed close to her. And then she remembered how much she hated the suffering of others and began to cry again.

It was his muttered agreement that drew her back out of herself, and Vesper gave a shake that would dislodge the other hybrid. But he was already pulling away with another lick, one she would have considered inappropriately intimate from a male in any other situation. Looking at his mismatched eyes, innocent yellow and ember red, dispelled that unease and caused her to sigh and poke her nose against his chin, hoping to turn those eyes toward her so he would heed her words.

Vesper could not speak when she opened her mouth, though, and it was a few false starts, a few stifled pains in her chest, until she murmured, “None of it is your fault, and I’m sorry for ever snapping.” It was at herself rather than him she was yelling at, but he probably didn’t know that. “It’s just—I feel—it’s just unfair. Rogues like me who’ve tempted death several times get to live while the good souls fall like autumn leaves.” Her blue eyes lit with a sort of understanding as she spoke these words; it put her fury and grief into perspective. She wept for more than Blind, but Blind had been the one to symbolize her beliefs. And Blind had been sweet and endearing in every way, and…

“I wish… I wish I could have been there. Even if I couldn’t have prevented it. I don’t think anyone could have. But I wanted to say goodbye, and be there so she wasn’t scared…”

She looked at him, her face open and vulnerable and unlike what she had shown anyone before. “Did it take very long for her to die?”

A raven’s cry, more of a croak than the distinct caw of the smaller crow, drew her large ears up again. Of course, her winged shadow would never leave her completely alone on this mountain, as vulnerable as she was with this stranger she found herself wholeheartedly trusting. However, annoyance was not her first emotional response to the dark scout’s presence. He was just a bird, an annoying bird, but Stark made her feel safe right now. She lowered her ears again and looked at the male.

He reassured her, and she nodded dully, glad that Blind hadn’t lingered in the world with agony and terror. His remark about a meal caused her brows to pinch together, her face turning sharp and icy, but he corrected himself swiftly, and she closed her eyes.

Maybe I will see you again, Blind. The thought came out of nowhere as her beliefs stirred in her chest and spirit. You will find favor in the great cycle. Your ashes will flame again in a glorious life.

It was rare that such thoughts trailed actively through her mind; reincarnation and her other beliefs were usually tucked away, never acknowledged. They simply existed, as she knew air existed although no one could really see it. She didn’t think about air as she breathed it in. But when it was fading from her convulsing chest, when she was gasping desperately for breath, needing that reassurance, it came. And she needed the reassurance of her beliefs in that moment.

Soft fur brushed hers, and Vesper opened her pale blue eyes again. She did not pull away from the touch, not until he settled down closer to the earth and began to ask how he could help.

Bring her back, leap into the twilight between life and death and snatch her, at least tell her what I think of her.

Aloud, she said, “Nothing.” And then silence dropped after he talked about them being friends. Her gaze flitted across his scars, the facial structure that just spoke of coyote, of kin, while he was very wolf. She trusted him, and he was kind, and there was just enough life in him that spoke of mischief, of something she could connect with. She considered him quietly.

“Perhaps,” the coywolf murmured vaguely. She looked across the mountains, south toward home. “But right now… Right now I don’t think I want to see you again for a long time.” She rose stiffly, her slender and scarred limbs quivering. The raven flapped down and landed on her shoulders, and somehow the added burden of the bird gave her strength. But she did not acknowledge Stark in the least.

“Tell me your name.” Vesper looked at him with a sad, soft smile. “I’ll try to remember it when I’ve healed and we see each other again.”