Of Fur and Ice

by Andrea Marie Brokaw

I think he doesn't, but I don't argue.

  His room here is nearly the opposite of his room at school. He doesn't have piles of dirty clothes and old dishes on the floor, or anything. The room is still clean, but the adjective 'cluttered' springs to mind. Three walls are covered in shelves, which are crammed full of books and wooden carvings. The carvings cover everything from kittens to the Grim Reaper. The books include a wide selection of fantasy and horror novels, a decent collection of graphic novels, and a full section on wolves and werewolf myths.

  He appears to have the complete works of Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Poppy Z Brite. The entirety of Laurell K Hamiliton's Anita Blake series. And... I find myself grinning inanely. He has a whole shelf of Sherrilyn Kenyon.

  “Okay, I'm not going to give you a hard time over Anita Blake, because she's fairly violent and from what I've been told, the later books are fairly pornographic, but the Dark Hunters series?” I turn as Warren drags a long sleeved t-shirt over his head. It's a shade of blueish gray that seriously sets off his eyes, a fact that distracts me from what I was saying.

  Warren raises his eyebrows. “What about it?”

  What about what? Oh, yeah.

  “Well, those books are pretty solidly in the romance genre.”

  He pulls a pair of boots from under the bed. Apparently he's decided if he's going to get dressed, he's going to get all the way dressed. “Your point being?”

  “Well...”

  “It's a stereotype that only women read romance novels.” He quickly ties a lace and moves onto the other boot. “Sherrilyn Kenyon has an interesting take on were-culture. It intrigues me. Even if she is incredibly sentimental and optimistic.”

  “Romances wouldn't be much fun if they were realistic.”

  He smiles sadly at his boot. “No, they wouldn't be.” Standing abruptly, he leaves the room. “Are you done invading my privacy yet?”

  Sheepishly, I follow.

  In the kitchen again, Warren turns off the stove, his eyes narrowed at the overcooked oatmeal on it. Shaking his head, he takes the pot from the stove and dumps its contents into the trash with a dull bang on the bottom of the vessel. “Is whoever brought you waiting down stairs?”

  “Whoever brought me?” I mimic mindlessly.

  “Yeah. Seth? Tod?”

  “Me.”

  He runs the spoon around the edge of the pot, dislodging the last of the ruined oatmeal. “You?”

  “Yeah. I sort of borrowed your truck.” Pulling the truck keys from my pocket, I hold them up with fingers that are suddenly tingling from lack of blood circulation.

  “You borrowed...” The pot slams down hard in the sink, the spoon hurled angrily after it. Flames in his eyes and his nostrils flaring, Warren bears down on me with long, hostile strides, a growl in the back of his throat.

  “I'm sorry,” I whimper. “I-”

  “Michaela!” Fingers dig into my arms, bruising the flesh. “It isn't safe for you to be out alone! What the hell were you thinking?” My teeth rattle as he shakes me.

  “I was thinking you were in danger!” I yell back.

  He stills. His next line is a whisper. “Even if I were, you should have gotten someone to come with you.”

  He sighs and walks away.

  He picks up the pot again, then starts to scrub it. “Do you like oatmeal?”

  What? Oatmeal? I rub my arms sulkily, but answer, “Sure.”

  “Good. I'll try not to burn this batch.”

  “You do that,” I grumble.

  Stopping, he looks at me for several long moments, until well after the point were I start to feel ashamed of my churlishness.

  “I'm sorry, Michaela.” He makes his eyes meet mine. “You scared me.”

  “You scared me first,” I whisper back.

  Nodding, he acknowledges that with solemnity. “I know. I'm sorry about that too.”

  “Why did you do it?” I ask. “What's been going on with you?”

  In answer, he turns away again and puts the pot on the stove, starting the water to boil.

  Okay. Not going to tell me. I could try harder, but I've already forced my way into his home, being even more invasive would be wrong.

  “Could we have apples in it?”

  He squints at me, then a look of relief skirts over his features. “Sure.” Grabbing one from a bowl on the counter, he tosses it to me. I'm a bit worried when he gets out a knife that he's going to throw it, too, but he slides it along the buttercup yellow counter instead. It stops exactly on target, right in front of me.

  “Are you going to ask me about last night?” Carefully, I start to peel the apple, preparing it for dicing.

  Warren sighs. “Don't have to. Mom called the school this morning. She wants to know what it is the pack is hunting.”

  The fruit knife moves slowly around the apple. “The pack is actively hunting the male whatever-I-am?”

  My companion gives me a slow nod. “He's been slaughtering livestock, breaking into barns in human form, and then eating what he lures out.” His lip curls in revulsion. “Not even eating all of it, letting most of the animal go to waste.”

  I can't tell if he's more disgusted by the stealing or the waste, but his repulsion is clear.

  “So you left school for a while so you could help your pack find this monster?” I guess. So maybe I'm not willing to let that go completely...

  He shrugs, not meeting my gaze.

  “What are you going to do to him if you find him?”

  “Do you remember when you invited me to go to Anchorage, but I couldn't because I had to stay here and defend someone?”

  Coming to the end of the apple skin, I consider tossing it over my shoulder to see if it spells out the name of the man I'm going to marry like the old wives' tale says it should, but I drop it quickly in the trash instead while I answer Warren's question. “Yeah. I wasn't sure if you were joking or not.”

  He gives me a pained look. “Not.”

  “Alright.” I take a deep breath. “So you didn't want your dad to kill this guy...” Angling the knife, I start to cut wedges.

  “He'd taken a chicken.”

  “A chicken?”

  Warren nods, taking the apple slices and starting to dice them into a small bowl. “It was his third chicken, but he'd never taken anything more noticeable.” He gives me a long look. “His crime wasn't so much that he had taken the birds. The crime was doing something that could draw unwanted attention to our kind.”

  “Right.” I nod my understanding. “But a chicken here and there wouldn't draw much attention, would it? The farmer would just think a fox had gotten in or something, right? Or a the mundane kind of wolf?”

  “Right. Or maybe the chicken had escaped. Even if he thought it had been stolen outright, he'd have no reason to think it was a were.”

  “Okay.” No longer having a task to perform, I put my little knife in the sink. “But your dad wanted to kill him anyway?”

  “No, not really,” he says, weary. “But some of the pack did, and the rules were on their side.”

  I shiver. “So you had to defend the guy so it looked like your dad wasn't going against the will of the entire pack?”

  Warren nods and puts down his knife. Picking up a bottle of cinnamon, he shakes some powder out onto the apple before putting the bowl in the microwave and going to check on the oatmeal. “Right.”

  “Did it work?”

  “He was sent on a Trial.” Stirring the pot, he glances at me to see if I understood that word. I shake my head. “He was sent into the wilderness to try to survive alone for three days. He's the one who first smelled the Mystery Beast.”

  “Mystery Beast?”

  Warren shrugs. “They didn't know to call him the 'whatever-Mike-is' when the pack first started talking about him.” A teasing smile is flashed my way before he turns serious again. “Although I'm not sure why not. They'd been told about you, that no one knew what your beast is because your scent is different to everyone and females alwa
ys say they've never smelled anything like it. I was pretty sure you were connected; I just hoped I was wrong.”

  “Why?” I ask softly.

  Warren looks down at my hand on his arm. When did I put that there? “Why what?”

  “Why...” I move my hand away, wondering what possessed me to put it there in the first place. “Why did you hope we weren't connected? People don't think I have anything to do with the dead animals, do they?”

  “I don't think anyone seriously thinks that, no.” Watching the pot closely, he stirs the oatmeal some more. “Would you get the apples?” he asks as the microwave dings.

  “Would I get the apples?” I mutter under my breath, going to get the apples despite resenting the way my companion likes to evade questions. Telling myself I'm being unreasonable, that he doesn't actually owe me answers to anything, I open the door to the microwave. The bowl is hot enough I drop it almost as soon as I touch it. Drawing my sleeves down to act like oven mitts, I pick it up again and take it over to Warren, who doesn't seem to notice how hot it is when he picks it up.

  Silently, he mixes in the apples and then divides the cereal into two bowls, putting mine on the table for me rather than just handing it over. He puts his in front of the chair furthest from mine, then pours two glasses of milk, stirring chocolate syrup into mine.

  “Thank you.” I smile when he brings the milk near, but the expression falters when he ignores the hand I hold out for it and puts the glass down on the table instead. Is he trying to avoid the possibility of touching me? Considering that he was pressing me against his naked chest not half an hour ago, that's kind of strange.

  But then, what about Warren isn't strange?

  The silence as we eat isn't exactly an easy one, although its not as uncomfortable as it could be.

  “It's good,” I offer, but he meets it only with a quiet thanks.

  We're both finishing up when the door from downstairs bangs open. “Michaela!” Mr. Atherton's voice storms into the kitchen. Then Mr. Atherton himself storms into the kitchen. “You did not have permission to leave the school.”

  Permission? Since when did I need permission? “My understanding,” I state calmly, and as officially mature as I can manage, “is that as long as I return at a reasonable hour, my movements are unrestricted.”

  Warren informs me in a grumbling, gravel-filled voice, “That was before something interested in hunting you moved into our territory.”

  “Precisely.” Mr. Atherton glares down at me, and I realize his anger was based on fear. “Do you have any idea how worried everyone is about you?”

  I blink. It hadn't occurred to me people might be upset to find me missing.

  “No, you don't, do you?” Shaking his head, Mr. Atherton lets out a not-so-gentle snort.

  The sound rankles, and anger tightens my spine. “If you'd just told me where Warren was, then maybe I would have been happy to stay locked up!”

  “That wasn't his fault,” Warren interjects quickly. “I didn't tell him he could tell you, so he didn't know I wouldn't mind. Besides, I wasn't hard to find. Would have been even easier to find had you remembered how to use a telephone.”

  “Mike...” Mr. Atherton sighs softly and squeezes his eyes shut for a breath. “I'm sorry I made you more worried about Warren than you needed to be. The fact remains, though, that if you honestly felt a need to search for him, you should have taken others with you. At least half the school would have done it in a heartbeat.” He shakes his head at me. “Hell, I would have brought you down here if you'd just asked me.”

  “You wouldn't tell me where he was.” I squint at the principal, thrown more by that one little curse word than by his blustering. “Why would you bring me to him?”

  Mr. Atherton shrugs. “Simply giving you a lift to a place you specified wouldn't be betraying a confidence.”

  Wolves. Will I ever understand them?

  Warren clears his throat. “You need to be going if you're going to make it back before moonrise.”

  “You aren't coming with us?” I ask him. The question sounds like half of a plea.

  Warren shakes his head.

  I get up, trying to keep my head from drooping but failing. “Well, thanks for the food. Sorry I bothered you... and scared everybody... and all.”

  “Michaela?”

  Warren's watching me with a quiet expression. “I'll be back after the moon.”

  Nodding quietly, I decide not to wonder why that comforts me so much.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mr. Atherton doesn't speak to me on the way home from Denali's. Which is fine. I don't want to talk to him either.

  When we walk into the building, I'm instantly faced with a glowering version of Tod. With Mr. Atherton's cell phone, I called him from the car so he could tell people to stop freaking out over me. He didn't sound very happy then, but the disgruntlement in his voice had nothing on his expression. Aliah stands beside him. She gives me a teeny smile of welcome, but Tod himself only narrows his eyes. His arms are folded moodily in front of him, and the manner in which he leans against the wall is far from nonchalant.

  My head dips, and a whimper threatens to voice itself as I start to understand exactly how upset my den father is with me. The feeling of worthlessness goes beyond what I would expect to feel for distressing a friend. This is closer to how I felt when Dad walked into the school office back in Washington.

  “Tod, we have finished this discussion,” Mr. Atherton states firmly.

  “No,” the fox replies, just as firm. “We have not.”

  So... A flicker of hope tries to come to life. Was Tod not staking out the door to get a chance to lecture me before I go to my cage? Is it Mr. Atherton he's so angry with? My eyes go to Aliah, hoping she'll give me a clue, but she's watching the carpet too closely to notice my questioning gaze.

  Wearily, the principal sighs. “I know she's one of your den children. But she's also one of my students.”

  “That doesn't take precedence.”

  Under an intense, hostile glare from someone who outweighs him by at least a hundred pounds of pure muscle in human form and turns into much more impressive beast, my favorite reynard squares his chin and refuses to budge an inch from his position.

  “She's not going to change in a cage.” Tod's voice remains calm, although his eyes are another matter. “We all know that.”

  “We don't know for sure.”

  Tod and I just look at him. Aliah shuffles her feet, clears her throat, but doesn't say anything.

  “If she doesn't change this month, we'll try your idea next moon,” Mr. Atherton offers.

  “But it's not just a matter of learning what I am.” Shaking a little, I enter the conversation. It is about me, after all. “The wolves have no idea what they're hunting.”

  Catching the look Aliah gives me, my stomach rolls over in misery. “The parent den's involved in the search too?” I ask her.

  She gives me a solemn nod.

  Stupid foxes. They're supposed to be oh, so clever. Shouldn't they be smart enough to leave the dumb, potentially dangerous stuff to the wolves?

  “They have to know,” I tell Mr. Atherton. Turning to Tod, I ask, “What's your way involve?”

  “You changing,” he states simply, his eyes on our principal.

  They glare at each other as I look to Aliah. She takes a quick breath. “You go outside.”

  “Alone?”

  Her head shakes. “No, but with a smaller audience? Because we don't know if it was the room or the company?” Her eyes start to go to Mr. Atherton, but then fall to the floor.

  “I'll be with you,” Tod tells me.

  Aliah opens her mouth, shifting Tod's glare to her. Her eyes wide, she closes her lips again with instant obedience. “No,” he says to her. “Just me.”

  Miserably, my friend nods.

  “We don't know what you're going to be,” Tod explains to me. “Or how dangerous you'll be.”

  Mr. Atherton nods. “Which is precise
ly why I can't go along with it.”

  Shivering, I rub my arms and try to think. “If I'm going to be a danger to people...”

  “You're not,” Aliah whispers. “They're just being over-protective.”

  Tod glowers at her, but doesn't bother to debate the issue.

  “This isn't up for discussion,” Mr. Atherton declares, motioning me toward the sickbay cages. “I'll leave you alone, but I can't leave you free.”