Eden Riverwallow's Arc

Chapter 18 of 18

Eden woke with six names in her head and no idea how to hand a wolf her heart. She had walked home from the stone split knowing she wanted him. She did not know how to say so to something that was not only a man. A human suitor took flowers. A human suitor took her hand across a table. She had watched him drop to four legs and lift a muzzle full of teeth. Flowers were an insult. She was sure of that much and nothing else. She sat at her kitchen table and made herself think. The cottage listened. She could feel it listening. She did not ask it for help. It had refused her before, and this was not its business. She thought about what she had seen him do. He watched. He guarded. He ate what he caught. He lived alone in a stone hollow that smelled faintly of animal. She took her coat and went to the butcher at the edge of town. She bought two thick steaks, bloody through the paper. She bought a new hunting knife with a bone handle. On the walk back she cut rosemary and thyme from the yard and tied the bundle with twine. Steak, herbs, knife. Meat he could eat raw or cook. A blade sharper than the one on his belt. Nothing that pretended he was only a man. She carried the bundle through the woods without calling him first. She wanted him to see her arrive with her hands full. The stone split was cold. She stepped through into the cottage in the hollow. He was at the table cleaning something. He looked up. His eyes moved to the bundle in her arms and stopped there. She set it down between them. She unwrapped the cloth. The steaks lay dark on the wood. The knife lay across them. The herbs smelled sharp in the close air. "I don't know how this is done," she said. "For you. I'm guessing." He did not speak. He reached out and picked up one of the steaks in his bare hand. He held it a moment. Then he tore a piece with his teeth and chewed, watching her. Her stomach turned. She held his eyes. He swallowed. He set the steak down. He picked up the knife, tested the edge with his thumb, and laid it beside his own on the table. "You brought meat and a blade to a wolf," he said. "You didn't guess wrong." "Then I want to know the rest. How your kind courts. What I'm supposed to do next." He was quiet a long moment. His hand went to the amulet at her throat, the cracked moon with his hair inside. He touched it once and let it go. "You already started," he said. "But there's a hunt after the gift. Both of us. Together. And what we bring back, we share." "When." "Tomorrow night." She nodded. The cottage she had left behind did not know where she was. The wolf across the table did. That was the answer she had come for.