Thirty Six

“Wolf…Stop all these and let me the fuck out, give me my body now!!!” I shouted not understanding what the hell was going on but that didn't seem to stop the fourth wolf from coming towards me.

The fourth wolf came last and she came slowly, the way something comes when it has decided it doesn't particularly care about arriving anymore. She was the darkest of them all — fur the color of deep water at night — and she moved like grief given legs. Old grief. The kind that had stopped being sharp and had settled into something permanent.

She looked at me and then looked at the other three and something in her expression was desperately, profoundly sad.

"Look at us," she said quietly. "Look at what we are. What we've done to this girl. Her whole life — broken because of us. It would have been kinder to let her be nothing. It would be kinder still to end all of it now. Let’s all of us die here—"

“What!!! Don't say that—” even if I didn't understand what was going I heard one wolf say something I will never accept.

That was me dying.

"Little girl I'm only saying what's true—"*

“I SAID DON’T!!!—

And I finally lost it, for a second until I remembered I had just shouted at a wolf in a larger size than I was and with dangerous fangs and claws.

“Did you just raise your voice at me?” She started moving towards me slowly ready to pounce on me and I could feel the real threat that made me afraid. “I might just end you myself”

After her last word she growls in a deadly way.

I was going to lose my mind. I was genuinely, completely going to lose my mind right here, not from the venom, not from Maxwell, not from the cliff or the river or any of the thousand things that had tried to kill me in the last twenty four hours — but from four wolves in my own head all speaking at the same time and none of them listening to each other or to me.

“HMMM”

And then just one voice from behind me stopped all the motion of the wolves.

The fifth wolf stepped out of the darkness and pressure all around suddenly increased in lots of folds.

She didn't rush. She didn't fight for space. She simply walked forward and the other four went quiet the moment they felt her coming — not silent exactly, but smaller, the way everything gets smaller when something significantly larger enters the room.

Even the fourth wolf was forced to slowly retreat, moving backwards like she was accepting defeat before the fight started.

The fifth wolf was enormous. Easily twice the size of the others. Her fur was deep black shot through with electric blue that moved like current through water, and her eyes when they found mine were ancient in a way that made my stomach drop — not old like a person gets old, but old like mountains are old, like things that existed before anyone was around to name them.

She looked at the four wolves surrounding me. She didn't raise her voice. She was the one in charge of my body.

"All of you," she said, and the cold in her tone was absolute, "shut the fuck up. Right now. Or I will shut you up myself, and I promise none of you will enjoy how I do it."

Not one of them made another sound.

Raya's burning fur dimmed slightly. The pale wolf dropped her eyes. The silver one stopped circling. The dark one went still.

It wa

s visibly clear they were all afraid of her!