Chapter Thirty-Four: Scavenger Sun
Thanks to my beta, Blythechild!
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She refused the Med-Evac until Spencer was found, and no one argued with her. There was a tinge of nervousness in the air from every wolf who faced her, a bite of disquiet. They approached her like one would a wild animal; cautiously, and with an escape route planned. But then again, wasn't that exactly what she was?
She was a wild animal and she reminded them all of that. Even Aaron. Even Dave.
Even Elizabeth.
You need to come in out of the cold, Elizabeth begged, pacing around Emily as she hunched outside the settlement limits, hunchbacked against the light snow that dusted her coat and with her eyes locked on a faded horizon. Emily, you're still ill.
No.
There she stayed. For the first hour and then the second, until the search parties began to return empty pawed and handed. Not a trace of her partner and mate could be found under the slick surface of the once-thawed and re-frozen fields of the prairies. There were hundreds of crooked, dead trees dotting the horizon. Scents were obscured by the wet, metal stink of ice water. The snow kept shifting to a freezing rain and back again, turning the terrain treacherous and lacing the air with a bitter chill.
But she didn't care. She knew there was no way they'd let her join the search parties. She was too afraid of leaving Oliver behind to demand that they did allow her. If that meant she stood guard for their return, then that was what she would do. Pieces of her heart were scattered all over Efisga, and she was desperate to try and gather them back together into some kind of desperate pile, some show of this is what I've lost.
But that wasn't all that drove her. That wasn't what was pushing her back into the bleary madness that the fever kept fogging her thoughts with.
That wasn't the reason for the choking guilt or the determined self-recrimination.
What kept her out in the rain and the snow without a break or relief, despite the wounds that still wept and the exhaustion that sickened her, was the memory of a white-socked paw and an ant marching across it.
It was the memory of that paw twitching as she'd turned to walk away from him. A flicker of a heartbeat under a thin chest, Oliver's ears twitching at the sound. The slightest shift of his chest as they'd fled.
It was the memory of something she hadn't told Aaron and couldn't tell Ethan. Oliver knew it—but Oliver didn't have the vocabulary to betray her. It was a memory she'd tried and succeeded to twist in her own mind in order to push herself to flee the compound wolves, but that wouldn't be distorted any longer.
Daddy heart tick tick, Oliver had whispered to her before Emily had told her mom to take him back inside, out of the cold and into the company of his fawn friend. Tick tick tick. Is Daddy home yet?
Not yet, Emily replied softly. Soon. He'll be home… soon…
Because Spencer hadn't been dead when she'd run from him. He couldn't have been. She must have been mistaken. No matter how many of the search parties came back without a trace, no matter how many of them repeated that they hadn't picked up a sign of any pack or wolf on the huge expanse of the plains, she had to believe that.
Her mind was silent in the corner that she privately thought of as his, where their pair bond usually hummed, but she knew. He hadn't been dead when she'd run from him, despite her need at the time to believe he was. She was sure. He couldn't have been. She must have been wrong, somehow…
She must have been. She refused to believe he'd died alone.
And so she waited.
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Of all the search parties that returned, Aaron's was last. Emily counted as they passed her; groups of three and four who avoided her gaze. Wolves and deer walking together, a strange line of beasts slipping out of the hazy rain and past with barely a word.
Dave returned alone. He'd kept searching as his team had given up. Unlike the others, he approached her.
Nothing, he said quietly. Emily, are you sure he's…
Yes, she said bluntly. He's here somewhere, Dave. I left him here. I… She stopped and huffed, fixating again on the crooked tree and its sad shape below. I… Stopping again. Voice cracking. She became suddenly aware of the cold and the misting rain and the howl of wind across the plains. It was a manic noise. Demonic. Illustrating just how huge the cavernous world around them was, as though their endless journey across the barren world hadn't already hammered that home.
Dave watched her, something dark lurking in his gaze. He's not dead, is he? he murmured, his voice a sudden shock. Emily, you don't believe he's dead.
I did, she said, truthfully. I do, she lied.
Silence broken by the patterning rain. A panel clanged nearby. Someone called for a wayward child, ushering them out of the dangerous darkness.
Fuck, Dave swore. When did you see him last?
She closed her eyes. I don't know. I… lost time. I had to run. I had to. They were coming… they came. They took my daughter, they took my Riley… I didn't run fast enough and if he's dead now he's… he's…
A cold muzzle pressed against hers. His voice, when it came, was weary: You should have told us. We would have searched longer if we didn't believe we were looking for a bo…
His turn to trail off and she winced as she heard it; he still believed they were looking for a body. Whether Spencer had been alive when she'd seen him last or not.
A clock clanged midnight, old-fashioned and disconcertingly alien. She jolted and whined with surprise and guilt and a sickly dizzy misery. I know, she whispered, but I was hoping I was…
Wrong? That he was dead to save her from this sensation of failure?
Right? That maybe she'd left him, that in the end, it hadn't really helped anyone, had it?
Either way, she was selfish and cruel. Not a wild wolf, or a human. There was nothing human about her actions, and nothing as clean as a wolf.
She turned away from Dave and the reminder of everyone she'd failed, looking back to the foggy skyline. Only visible because of the crack of a yellow moon slipping out from thick clouds, catching distant movement travelling closer. Shadows, moving slowly.
As they came closer, she saw the reluctance in their tread. And horror stole back into her life.
They were the last team. It was midnight. Above them, a winter moon blinked down. Perhaps a sun would have been crueller. Perhaps it would have been cleaner. Maybe it would have made this unreal.
And, proving how she was a nothing wolf with no ability to be human or canine anymore, as Aaron walked directly towards her, she felt nothing from his mind. No grief, no shock, no outrage, despite seeing all these things clearly in the lines of his body. His mind was closed to her. Dave's too, even as he took a step backwards and whined, his tail slinking down.
She felt nothing.
She was… nothing.
Where is he? she asked.
Aaron stopped.
Where is he? again.
Emily…
Where. Is. He.
The wind howled. Paws, behind them. She snuffed the icy air. Ethan. Elizabeth. Other wolves she didn't know, alerted by a nearby watcher to the final team's slow approach.
We found a body, said a stranger suddenly, one of Aaron's team. Ruthless because he didn't know she was mad and on the cusp of growing madder. There was a tree sort of nearby—it could have been it.
Could? Emily asked coldly. It either was or it wasn't. Did you scent? His fur is unmistakable—
Emily, said Aaron again, hoarsely. He moved closer and she stood with twin cracks of her front knees and dodged away, fleet in the numb wash of nothing that shoved away her pain.
—it's butterscotch, a gorgeous honey tan. How could you not have seen it? Even under the moon, it shines. His paws are the same, barely darker, except for one—it's white. He has one white sock. Did you see his one white sock? Did you check—
Emily…
His mask is lighter than his fur, as is his chest and belly. He has a black dorsal stripe ending in a black-tipped tail. Aaron, you know this. You know all of this. He's slender and strong and brilliant and… and unmistakable. Unforgettable… y-you have to…
No one said her name this time.
You have to know him, she whispered, more to herself than anything else. I know him. I'll always know him… he's my mate, I-I… love him.
Oh, baby, Elizabeth sighed.
The body has been… scavenged on… Aaron said finally, and didn't look her in the eyes as he said it. She went, if possible, colder. The wind dropped. Peace fell on the prairies. Vultures and foxes, mostly. There's very little to use as identification.
Bones and fur are scattered everywhere, another wolf added, ears flicking. We didn't even find the sku—
Aaron snarled and snapped, a warning.
But it was enough. Emily nodded.
Okay, she said, and then: show me.
Shock. She didn't give a fuck.
Show me.
Aaron snarled again, this time at a wolf who made a noise of dismay. Okay, he said, and walked to her. Their muzzles touched. It was unneeded. He was comforting her. She refused to be comforted, stiffly resisting his touch.
And he showed her.
Bones glinting white under the yellow moon, kicked up from the thin layer of snow. They glistened with a thin layer of frost, almost beautiful. She could see where the wolves had dug at the dirt and the snow, finding more bones, more fur. The suggestion of a half-gnawed wolfish flank sunk into the mud. Fur still attached, turned dark by wet and shadow.
But, if it was underneath a hot, scavenging sun, it could be tan. Perhaps even butterscotch.
Without a word, she turned and left. No one called after her. No one stopped her.
Ethan was already gone. She saw a dark tan shape flicker past the outskirts and vanish into the prairies without looking back, leaving a straight line of pawprints. She knew he wouldn't return. His brother was gone. What was left to stay for besides a pup who looked far too much like the dead and the wolf who'd killed him?
She found Oliver in the home of the doctor. Both the doctor and his wife shot upright when she nudged the door open, whuffing for her son and grabbing him unceremoniously by the scruff. As she slipped away with her pup, she heard hooves approaching. Someone else could tell the man why she fled him.
She found the medical centre dim and sleepy. The on-call nurse dozed without waking at her silent entry through the unlocked doors. Oliver was quiet and yawning in her grip, uncomfortable but never complaining.
He spoke when she dragged the bedding from her bed and pushed it under, creating a dark little nest against the wall where she could curl with him safe and warm at her belly. This is fun, he declared, climbing in next to her and settling down before touching her mind and tensing. Mama sad? Where Daddy?
Not coming, she said softly, licking the scars on his muzzle and feeling something shift and crack in her chest. Oliver looked confused. He's not coming, baby.
Why not?
Why not? What a question. How could she answer that?
Because Mama made it so he couldn't. Damning. But true. And now he's gone.
Gone like Rilly?
Undoubtedly. Emily closed her eyes. If she'd failed Spencer, of course she'd fail Riley too. And she'd already proven that she was far too selfish to leave her son behind and walk the land alone, back along the long, cold path to the Northern Slope where the seals and bears and wolves lived in an endless night.
Oliver whined suddenly, sharp and hurting. Oh no, he gasped. Not gone like Rilly. Gone like Felik. Always gone! Always!
Emily nodded.
Hazel eyes stared at her, huge and betrayed. Dangerously shiny. But I don't want him to be, the pup said desperately. Don't want!
Any moment now, he'd realize it was her. Realize she was the one who kept taking the ones he loved from him. He'd walk away. Maybe to his deer friends. Maybe they could care for him like she couldn't. Maybe she was always destined to be alone, and midway between woman and wolf.
But he didn't. He cuddled close, made a noise like he was finally learning what loss was, and said, But you won't leave, Mama. Not ever.
No, she whispered, she whispered, a promise that was strangely forceful, despite no longer having the right to make further broken promises. No, not ever.
'Kay, he finished with, and curled up tight. Still awake, just hiding his tears. He'd learned that early.
There was a noise by the door. She looked and saw a shadow watching her.
Aaron.
But she ignored him. What could she say? A woman loved you once, but that woman died. I have nothing left to offer you, not anymore.
Because it was over.
And he was still dead.
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The trail led in a wobbly line out from the shaded opening of their den and down towards the ridge where the rabbits ran.
At least until Emily woke properly, and realized that the trail was a line of muddy pawprints on tile; the ridge a hump of rashly discarded blanket. The only thing similar between now and then, that bright morning at the beginning of their hopeful journey, was that there was one less pup against her than there should have been.
Riley's out, Emily said to no one in particular, and then stood on shaky legs.
No Spencer rocketed past to fetch their wayward child. Instead, the door burst inward and Elizabeth appeared, her eyes wild and scent frantic.
"Doctor Duchant can't find Celeste," she exclaimed, staring down at Emily. "And Oliver is nowhere to be seen."
Emily shivered and shivered and said nothing.
"Emily?" Her mom stepped forward, the fear shifting and being replaced by frustration. "You have to get up! Come on—I understand you're upset about Spencer and still sick, but you're the only one Oliver will respond to mentally! We can't find Ethan—you're the only wolf he'll come to!"
Emily didn't move.
Elizabeth shot her a look that was part disgust mixed with shame. "Okay," she said quietly, and left behind the lingering scent of anger. Emily waited for her footsteps to fade before moving.
In the silence that followed, she became a silent, wild wolf again, and slipped soundlessly from the medical centre and through the whirlwind of activity that was the small settlement searching for the two young.
"You don't understand—" a thickly accented voice was arguing as its owner strode past. Emily recognised Aaron's soft reply, and shrunk back under a pile of firewood, hidden in the gloom. Aaron would stop her. She knew where Oliver was. He'd stop them both. "—our young are independent, yes, but never alone. No fawn goes anywhere in less than a herd of three!"
She waited for them to pass, and then ran from the settlement without looking back. She was distantly hungry, overwarm, and dangerously close to falling back into her fevered mind.
That only meant she had to find them before she fell.
The sun rose ahead, sharp behind a thin cover of clouds. The light was weak but determined, and her paws were wet in the melting slush. That was good. The wet world around her was good. Water carried scent easier through the air. It hastened rot. The sun would release what the snow had kept hidden.
She kept her eyes, not on the horizon ahead, but on the sky above. What she wanted wouldn't be found on the ground.
Her exhaustion made the trek seem endless until she was focusing on one paw in front of the other and telling herself that the pooling, painful heat was muscle strain and nothing nastier just to keep herself going. The mud sucked at her feet. Flies buzzed around her damp fur. She fell, twice, into hidden pools of ice cold meltwater and muck.
But then she saw it. Dots in the blue sky above. Wheeling hungrily.
Scavengers.
She walked doggedly towards them and the meal they'd been denied.
She found it. And she found them. The pup and the fawn splashing happily in puddles between fronds of frost-bitten grass, both seemingly unconcerned about the predators above or the scattered bones kicked about by their juvenile feet.
Emily stopped and stared. The carcass was torn apart by uncaring jaws, but strings of fur and rotten flesh still clung to cracked bones.
She looked at the tree in the distance. Was it the same crooked tree?
She couldn't tell.
She feared it was.
Oliver had seen her, slinking to the ground with his tail tucked between his legs and his ears flat. Mama, he whined, cringing into a puddle until his muzzle was half hidden by the brackish water. Was huntin'. Gonna find Daddy…
Emily looked back at him, shaking away the thin horror of those wolfish bones. There was a rhythmic thumping in the air, somewhere. Distant from them. Helicopter rotors, she recognised. The Med-Evac they'd stalled the day before.
Howls began. Her absence had been noted.
Is Daddy here? she asked carefully, deliberately not looking at the body.
Was, said Oliver pertly, his little nose twitching. Not now. He turned in place, eyes intent. I can find him but. I promise.
Your father was always the best at tracking… Emily said hesitantly. Pain throbbed in her paws, her chest. Nausea pushed up her throat. She was going to be ill. She couldn't think. Couldn't puzzle through…
Even as a pup, said a voice. Emily whirled. Ethan padded up. Neither Oliver nor Celeste jumped at his approach, and Emily groaned when she realized just how out of it she was. He'd been here all along. Neither child had been unsupervised in the boggy prairie. I never could hide from him—he had a nose like a bloodhound. Wonder if that's genetic?
Emily didn't dare to hope. Another howl—Aaron. Calling her. Worry and fear shot through his cry.
Oliver, she said. Her son looked at her. Oliver, find Daddy. Quick. Quick!
Okay! Oliver said, dancing about happily, and bounded off. Come on, Mama! Gonna snuff.
They followed. Barely daring to hope, they followed. Followed him down, down, down a narrow gash in the ground and up once more. No discernible track to guide them, just thin ledges and toeholds that no wolf could cling to. They wound along until Emily wasn't sure if they were going up or down anymore, or simply just falling into the end of the earth.
They came out upon a valley. It swept down and away, running thick with rivers of water and pooling into a glossy lake against the sky. But Oliver didn't follow the water.
He turned back and crossed the ledge, as sure as any goat, his eyes locked on a grassy cliff above. It yawned where water had sheared it in two, rocky and tufty and with barely discernible cracks where roots from the trees above twisted out.
There was no way a wolf was up there. Simply no way.
Daddy, said Oliver proudly, his tufty tail wagging and flicking mud onto Emily's nose. She padded closer, Ethan close behind. Celeste followed, picking delicately across fallen clods of dirt.
A crack came into view. High and sharp and hidden. A bloody smear across one side in the shape of a palm.
A wolf couldn't get up there. A human could.
Emily shuddered.
Wait here, Ethan ordered her, striding forward. I'll go.
No. Emily was cold enough that Ethan faltered, and already moving. Her head thumped and the world thumped with it, but she was already rearing to grab for the crack with paws that were suddenly shapeless.
Everything twisted. She wavered. Twisted more.
Fingers caught the ledge, the edge of the crack, and it crumbled against her dirt-encrusted nails. A thin hand scrabbled for a hold. She slipped on feet that didn't know how to be feet anymore, her legs long and ungainly, her body confused.
Before she passed out, she gathered the last of her strength and clung.
"I've got you," said Ethan, and a wide hand landed on her spine and pushed her up. "Go, Em."
Human and bare and shockingly alive, she tumbled forward and down and into the earth. Through the hole she easily slipped, dangerously skinny. Forward and down and down, scraping on every sharp edge, until she landed on a surface that gave way under her.
Cold. It was cold. She gasped with a human mouth and a clumsy tongue, her fingers fumbling for a purchase in case she fell deeper. Weak light trickled in above, clouded by a cascade of dirt and small rocks that pattered down atop them. Under her hands and her legs and her ass, the ground was grainy and soft and—
Moaned, shifting slightly. She looked down. Found her useless hands.
Traced them along a curled-up shape that twitched and thumped dully along with her bounding pulse.
She made a noise that was supposed to be his name but was a sob instead, falling forward and over the shape beneath her. She couldn't speak. She didn't know how anymore. Her eyes watered painfully, the hollow they were crushed into twisting and tightening around her. She made another noise and it was closer to a wail. It was pain. Pain and shock and grief and a frightening hope, and she heard Oliver and Ethan crying out in reply.
"Emily," rasped the shape beneath her. His eyes opened, catching the thin light despite the dirt coating his face. "Em…"
She found her voice. Ethan's head appeared above, cutting off the light.
"He's alive," she sobbed, her voice fucked. "Alive, alive, alive, alive—"
And then she couldn't speak anymore, just curling around him with her fingers cupping his face, drawing his filthy mouth up against hers. She kissed him. Once and twice and maybe really only once because she couldn't remember taking a break for breathing.
She kissed him for the first time with his heart going tick tick still against her side. She kissed him until Oliver slipped down into the hollow with them, squeaking with delight, and then she held her broken family close and waited for rescue.
There was howling outside, but this time she welcomed it.
.
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Emily drifted awake to the wall crumbling down and voices all around them. She stared as sunlight seemed to burst through the dirt, exploding into a cloud of dust. Shadowed figures loomed from the outside, reaching in. Reaching for them. Oliver cried out with fear and she turned and huddled around him protectively.
A blur of sluggish movement and Spence was up, wrapping his arms around them both and baring startlingly white human teeth at in a wolfish snarl, his mouth and eyes wild in a mask of mud and blood. Emily curled into that protective grip, her cheek against his rattling chest, ear brushing the ragged tear where the hoof had almost crushed him.
The shadow solidified. Spencer's grip weakened. "Hotch," he husked, swaying down and letting his head droop onto Emily's. "You came for her."
Aaron's voice was gentle, but Emily still heard him, even over the thump of helicopter rotors settling down and the shouts of people moving around them.
"I came for both of you," he said, and held out his hand.
Emily didn't know who took it. One of them did. When she was conscious of moving again, she was being led slowly towards one of two waiting helicopters, through a throng of people. She looked at who held her.
"Dave," she managed, leaning against him.
"I've got you," he reassured her, stooping just in time to scoop her legs up before they sagged out from under her. A scratchy orange blanket wrapped around her naked body, he picked her up easily. She didn't even have the energy to complain, simply snuffing warily and peering around to see where her pup was.
Right behind her, two steps. Carried by Elizabeth. Oliver's eyes weren't on her though, and he was wailing.
She was human and deaf to him, but she knew the wide-eyed look on his face. He desperately wanted one of them. And he wasn't looking to her.
She followed that gaze. Medics with armbands of red and white worked busily around a stretcher being carried to the adjacent helicopter to theirs. She could see the same orange of the blanket around her and a shock of dirty-brown hair.
Spencer.
They were taking him away.
No.
"No," she whined, and wiggled. Dave held her tightly. "Dave, I just got him back. No, no, no… no…"
Oliver saw her fighting and screamed louder, his little paws kicking as he howled despairingly. The din of the rotors and the shouting voices and the whir of machinery drowned out his voice. He howled again and she jerked hard enough that Dave had to kneel to readjust her.
"Em, woah," he said, eyes wide. "You can't go with him. He's critically injured—they need space to work on him to keep him stable. Aaron will stay with you."
"No!" she gasped, fear rushing her. She'd let him out of her sight and thought him dead. And even though she'd kissed him, held him, felt his heart still ticking—she needed to keep looking at him. Keep him near her.
Elizabeth suddenly yelled in shock, and there was a shriek that sent heads snapping around.
A human shriek.
Human and furious, Oliver threw himself out of his grandma's arms, hitting the ground and trying to run. Unused to his human legs, he fell, screamed, fell again.
Wailed, "Daaaaa!" and burst into manic tears. A shock of brown hair that curled and waved around his scarred face almost hid his desperate eyes. Almost.
Emily reached, shuffling forward and almost losing the blanket to catch her son, hefting him into her arms by one thin elbow. He pressed against her, damp and barely breathing through his screams, his mouth a round O of absolute dismay.
There were shouts. Emily turned, hugging Oliver tight with her heart hammering hard, seeing Spencer up and fighting. His eyes were on his son, blank and unheeding and barely conscious, but fighting nonetheless. He was human but his expression was wolfish, pushing through every pain that pressed him down in order to get to his child.
She stood and staggered forward, Oliver in her arms.
"Da," Oliver mumbled into her chest.
She had to reach Spencer. He had to see his son. Had to touch him.
Had to.
But she fell. Despite the hands that grabbed for her, Dave trying to steady her, she fell. She was just too weak. All this way, almost safe, and she couldn't get Oliver those last few steps to his father's arms.
She tried again, but a hand stopped her. She flinched away, felt the hand cup softly around her cheek and draw her face up when she hadn't even realized she'd averted her eyes.
Aaron.
Aaron with his gentle eyes and his heartbroken smile. Looking older and wearier than she'd ever seen him. She couldn't bear that look.
"You've come far enough," he said, "let me help."
And he took Oliver from her arms. Oliver gasped, looking to her for a sign of how to react. For a moment, the wolf inside her reared, furiously possessive.
But then it stopped. Settled. And she let her arms fall.
She let Aaron carry her son those last few feet, and watched as the man she'd loved placed her son in the waiting embrace of the man she'd almost lost. Spencer barely seemed to notice who'd carried Oliver to him, just that Oliver was there, hugging his son as though he couldn't ever bear to let go. And he didn't. He didn't let go, not until the medics used his distraction to sedate him and his hands slipped lifelessly down onto the stretcher.
Aaron brought the quiet Oliver back to her. As soon as she had him, he shifted back into a puppy, silent and teary.
"Your turn," Aaron said, letting her stand on her own before offering her his arm. "Not long now."
"Thank you," she managed, closing her eyes and meaning it. "Thank you."
He led her to the helicopter that would take her from this nightmare, and they left the winter prairies behind. The last thing Emily thought, as she lay down on the bed they'd forced her into, seeing a final snippet of grass and sky from the window, was that she'd never see it again.
And it was the last place she'd ever seen Riley.
Where are you? she thought, and then the anaesthesia kicked in and she thought of nothing at all.