EN ROUTE RED RIVER PACK

Brian was waiting with a fresh horse and a smirk that said he expected to receive my corpse back within the week.

I mounted it without looking at him. Did not take the hand he did not offer. Got one foot in the stirrup and swung up clean, settled my weight, checked the reins. The horse was good. Better than Brian deserved to own.

The stranger's cloak was folded under the saddlebag. I had not been able to leave it. I had held it in my hands for a long moment before dawn, because it was warm.

The gates creaked open slowly.

Snow clung to the ground in dirty patches taking me back to the night my whole pack was massacred. Same thing I am sure Brian has planned for Red River’s pack.

The road ahead was pale and empty. I nudged the horse forward and did not look back and felt my heart settle into something steady for the first time since I had watched my father's head roll across white ground.

Half a mile down the road I felt it.

The same weight I had felt at the bonfire. A pressure between the shoulder blades that was not wind and not cold and had no reasonable explanation. I twisted in the saddle.

On the ridge to my left, half-hidden by pine, there he stood in dark clothes. His dark hair is covered in snow freckles, one hand holding a pipe, smoke rising in a thin line into the grey morning air. He was watching me ride toward Red River territory a little too seriously for my liking.

My stomach turned over and I take comfort in the knife pressed against my ribs.

Who are you? Are you just like the rest of them and I have just been fooled.

So many questions clouded my mind. So of which had been living in me since the bonfire. Since he had killed two guards without breathing hard and then touched my face like I might break. Every time I had almost convinced myself he was just a good man in the wrong place at the right moment, something about the memory of him dismantled the argument entirely.

I should have kept riding. Every second I gave to this was a second Brian's scouts could note but I pulled the horse around anyway.

The climb to the ridge was steeper and the horse went picking through frozen ground and loose rock with more patience than I deserved. When I reached the top he was gone. Nothing but crushed pine needles in the shape of where someone had stood.

I felt disappointment rise through my chest and I can't explain why.

"Looking for me?"

I spun around immediately.

He leaned against a tree ten feet behind me, arms crossed, entirely unhurried. Like he had been there all along and had simply been waiting to see how long it would take me to turn around. Up close he was older than Ben by a margin that mattered. Not old. Just lived in. His eyes were tired in the specific way that meant they had seen too much. They pulled at something in me that I did not want pulled at.

I recognized that kind of tired. "You're following me," I said.

"You ride slow."

"I could have you shot for trespassing."

The smile that crossed his face was small and unhurried, like the rest of him. He tilted his head. "You have a gun?" A pause. "Then why didn't you?"

He pushed off the tree and moved closer and stopped just outside arm's reach. Smart man. I had two blades and nothing left to lose and he seemed to understand both of those things without being told.

I looked at him and felt a pull towards and hated it.

"I have to go." I stepped back, toward my horse. "Stop following me. You'll be in danger."

I heard myself say it and understood, I had stopped not to threaten him, but to protect him.

He did not move to follow me.

I let out a sigh I was holding and was almost to the ridge when his voice reached me across the pine needles and frozen ground.

"Running again, love."

I kept walking. I did not answer. I got back on the horse and I pointed its head toward Red River pack. How would I explain my red cheeks if I turned back, so I didn't. There was nothing behind me anymore but distance.