Wild Hearts

by Bridget Essex

  “Give me your jacket,” she snaps. “Now.”

  The woman bows her head. I get a feeling that it's a sign of submission: acquiescing to the pack leader. She shrugs out of the down jacket, handing it over.

  Marie slides into it and zips up the front. The jacket's not terribly long, but it's long enough that I don't have to worry so much about Seeing Things anymore.

  “You know what we'll do?” asks my grandmother, her tone chipper. And then she soldiers on without waiting for anyone's answer. “We're going to try again tomorrow! I'll eat a big dinner, do some exercises. It's probably just an off day for me. And the lock is old, who knows. It may be rusty.”

  It was meant to be a joke, but the way she's smiling at me...

  That smile doesn't have a drop of humor.

  Silver turns to me quickly, mouth open, pained. “Wait, what? It didn't work? The lock's still there?”

  I give a small shrug. “I guess so.”

  “This is not good.” Silver looks to Marie, and she's about to say something else, but my grandmother turns pointedly away from her. Marie snatches up a smart phone that the other woman hands her as Silver's eyes narrow, her jaw tightening.

  “We'll talk about this at dinner,” says Marie, her tone hard. “Please get Ella warm and dry, can you, Silver?” She doesn't wait to see if Silver replies. Instead, Marie turns and begins to walk barefoot through the snowy drifts, back up toward the compound buildings.

  The other lady doesn't even look in our direction—she trots to keep up, following Marie like a small puppy until they're both out of sight.

  Silver sighs for a long moment before turning back to me. Her hands are soft on my arms as she rubs at them absent-mindedly. She gazes down at my face, but she's a million miles away.

  I cough a little, wincing, and then, standing in the snow, I lift my face to Silver.

  “Something's...wrong...” I whisper to her, and then my teeth begin to chatter too hard again to speak.

  “What?” There's pain in her expression as her gaze rakes over every inch of me again. “What's wrong? Are you hurt?”

  Are you hurt?

  That's a strange question to ask after I just got done spending time with my grandmother...

  I'm shaking my head, grinding my teeth together, trying to steady my jaw. “No... I'm... okay. But...” I try to still the chattering, but it's impossible.

  Silver shakes her head, adamant. “We need to get you in out of this weather. You can take a lot of cold when you're a wolf, but there's always a limit for everything. Tell me when we're inside, okay?”

  My nod is such a small movement I wonder if she can even see it. It's hard for me to move at all: I'm so cold.

  But the chill in my heart is even colder.

  Chapter 22: Warmth

  Together, we make our way up the steep hill, me half stumbling, and her half carrying me. But we make it up, and when we're back among the compound buildings again, Silver turns me toward one of the smaller structures.

  “My room's in here. Gotta warm you up,” she murmurs, and—with her arm wrapped around my middle—she helps me ascend the rickety metal staircase on the side of the building. We climb until the second story, and Silver pushes open the rusty door on the landing.

  “In here.” She gestures into the darkness of the room, and I step inside.

  I can't stop shaking, but I'm realizing that all of the places I touch Silver are the warmest, are also not on fire.

  So I feel the absence of her strongly as she ushers me forward into the darkened room, and I stand apart from her as she closes the door behind us.

  But she doesn't just close the door.

  Silver crouches down, and let's the bolt at the foot of the door slide home. She also locks the knob and the throws the secondary bolt.

  She locked the door three separate times.

  There's no other way to feel about this than “ominous.”

  I stand in a sodden pool of melting snow, and I watch her move, almost methodically, through something she must have done many times before. There's the feel of a ritual about this locking of the door.

  Silver rises, brushing the palms of her hands along the thighs of her jeans.

  She sighs as she looks at me, her face pale, drawn.

  “What happened?” she asks me quietly, but she speaks the words at the exact same time that I break the silence, too.

  This is what I say:

  “I don't like her.”

  I just...blurted it out. But, standing and dripping on Silver's hardwood floors, almost naked except for her coat, it just didn't strike me as the best time to beat around the bush.

  Silver pauses, her entire body stiffening.

  In the stillness of the room, we stare at one another.

  She doesn't have to ask. We both know who I'm talking about.

  Silver's eyes narrow then, and her mouth becomes a thin, hard line. She watches me without saying anything.

  The moment stretches out, heavy and uncomfortable.

  So I keep on filling the silence.

  “I...I don't think my grandmother is a good person,” I stammer. “I don't know if coming here was a good idea.” I swallow. “I don't know,” I repeat, voice quiet, as Silver watches me in silence.

  She continues to say nothing.

  Guilt unfurls in my belly, poking me with sharp pangs of conscience. This is Silver's pack. She probably doesn't want to hear me trash her Alpha, and—

  Silver appears to decide on something, for she steps forward. She curls her hands gently at my elbows, drawing me closer to her.

  She bends down, and the heat of her breath warms my neck as she very, very quietly growls: “what happened to you in the water?”

  I blink.

  “In the water...? Nothing. Nothing happened. I can't turn into a wolf.” The hopelessness of the situation washes over me, and it feels like I'm right back in the stream again, underwater, gasping for breath, the weight of my situation pressing down on me.

  Because if Marie can't take the lock off my heart...

  That means that the people after me will never stop until they get what they want.

  They won't stop until I'm dead, and my heart is in their hands.

  Literally.

  I shudder, but Silver sighs, leaning her cheek against mine as she bends down, as she wraps her arms about me again.

  But it's to draw me closer.

  It's to whisper: “Marie tried to help you. And she'll try again.”

  But it doesn't sound particularly convincing.

  I shake my head, back up a little so I can search her face. “I just don't think that's true.” My throat tightens. “Silver...Marie pretty much hated me on sight. I mean, I didn't like her either, but I tried to get along with her. I don't know.” Whether it's the adrenaline from leaping into the frozen water or the adrenaline from the entire situation, I'm not sure: but I'm babbling.

  I take a deep breath and another one as Silver holds me close, the warmth of her body permeating into mine.

  Slowly, by small degrees, her heat becomes mine, too.

  It would be very easy to dissolve into this moment. To dissolve into her. I'm exhausted, exhausted from running, from being hunted, from getting my hopes up only to have them destroyed...

  I lean my head against Silver's shoulder, close my eyes, breathe in her scent.

  “She just doesn't give me a good feeling, Silver. My own grandmother.”

  There's an ache in the words as I remember how much Marie's profile looked like my mother's...

  I take a deep breath, let myself relax against Silver. But she stands stiffly, her arms wrapped around me still, but there's tension radiating out of her. I raise my head, watch her for a moment. Silver looks off into the dark of the room, her expression brooding.

  “Silver?”

  She shakes her head a little, sighs, gazing down at me with troubled eyes.

  “Yes, Ella?” Her voice is quiet.

  Almost subdued.
<
br />   I want to ask: has Marie always treated you so shittily? I want to ask: has she always been an asshole to you?

  But I don't ask these things.

  Instead, I settle on: “what has your relationship with Marie been like?”

  Her jaw flexes, like she's holding in words behind gritted teeth.

  She says stolidly: “Marie is the pack leader.”

  I snort. “Yes. And?”

  Pain stands clearly in her eyes.

  She doesn't speak.

  I frown.

  “You can say whatever you want to say. This is a free country,” I laugh weakly, but the joke falls flat.

  Silver's mouth remains in a hard line as she answers: “not when you're a werewolf.”

  “That's...that's not how things are supposed to be.”

  There's a certain level of indignation in my voice.

  One of the things Ma cared about most in this world was freedom, and she instilled that in me from the youngest age.

  Freedom was so important.

  It wasn't just this airy concept in my head. It was a real, living truth. To be free was to not live under anyone's thumb, ever. To know that I was worth just as much as anyone else.

  To never, ever take anyone's shit.

  And if that's the definition...

  Then Silver's not free.

  As if sensing my train of thought, Silver flicks her gaze to me. There's pain in her eyes. She murmurs: “back when your mother was here...Marie wasn't this bad. But then Anna left...and Marie got...worse.”

  I frown. “So, what was she like before my mother left?”

  “She wasn't like...like this.” Silver's jaw flexes again, she shakes her head. Adamant. “Oh, Marie's always had her sharpness, but she could honestly be almost nice, at times. And then when your mother left, it's like the last part of Marie's empathy or sympathy...or, I don't know. The 'human-ness' in her. It just...disappeared.”

  And so, I ask the only question that makes sense.

  The key in the lock, if you will:

  I ask her: “Silver...why did my mother really leave?”

  Yes, I was told why she left. She wanted to protect me, didn't want me to have the burden of being a werewolf...

  But that's what I was told.

  I don't know if it's actually true.

  Silver leans back, sighs, runs a hand through her tangled curls. She separates her body from mine, and the sudden intrusion of cold air is surprising.

  “She left because of your grandmother,” Silver murmurs, voice low, quiet.

  But the words reverberate through the room, echoing inside of me, too.

  I swallow, my throat suddenly tight.

  It makes sense.

  I think I knew it in my bones.

  But it's not an easy thing to hear.

  Silver shakes her head, like she's shaking herself out of a bad dream. She sighs, runs her hands through her curls again. “Let's get you warmed up,” she rumbles, and then she gestures behind her, to a little cot in the corner.

  Where are we, anyway?

  I peer over Silver's shoulder, take a glance around, and realize with a start that we must be standing in Silver's room. In the far corner is that makeshift army cot. There's an old armchair with a faded blue and white striped seat, a battered set of drawers against the wall covered with peeling wallpaper. An old heating grate squats beneath the one window.

  It's spartan. No decorations. Nothing personal or that indicates someone might actually live here and not just use it once in a blue moon. A fleece blanket is neatly folded at the foot of the cot, with a small, airline-sized pillow set on top of the blanket.

  “Do you...live here?” I ask.

  Silver shrugs a little, gestures to the cot again. But I persist.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  She shrugs with one shoulder, but I can tell we're getting into some uncomfortable territory.

  She won't meet my eyes.

  “Marie...Marie said you don't spend that much time up here, at the compound. So you probably have another room...”

  Again, a half-hearted shrug. “Are you disappointed? What were you expecting? The other room I have in Pittsburgh looks pretty much exactly like this.” Her smile is humorless. “I'm not a 'frills' kind of lady.”

  I mean, she's right. But “frills” and putting the stamp of yourself on a place are two very different things. The room gives me a very military feeling...which is perfectly fine if that's how you like things.

  But I don't know if this is what Silver likes or what she chose.

  After all, she didn't even choose this pack. My mother found her, helped her, brought her into the fold...

  Silver shakes her head again, but there's strength in her voice when she tells me: “the thing is, this isn't home.”

  I glance her way.

  She puts her head to the side as she considers me. “I've never really felt that home was a place.” Her eyes are soft, her lips turning up at the corners with that same softness.

  I shiver a little and sit down on the cot when she gestures to it this time.

  There was weight to her words.

  “So what's home to Silver?” I ask, giving her a soft smile in turn. The coat is still wrapped around my shoulders, but I'm aware, acutely so, that this is the only thing I'm wearing as Silver sinks down in front of me.

  She lowers herself slowly to one knee at my feet.

  She looks up into my eyes.

  My breath stutters in my chest.

  There is such intensity in her, a burning brightness...

  A...light.

  There's a long moment where her bright eyes travel my face. We're separated by a few inches. There is space between us. But even in that space, my skin is more sensitive than usual (what with being frozen and all), and I can feel the heat emanating from her body into mine.

  I feel her.

  “If home is a place...” Silver looks past my shoulder, unseeing. “Then it can be lost. It can't be counted on. And you need to be able to count on it. In dark times...” Her jaw flexes as she looks back to me. “It's what sees you through.”

  I watch her as emotion rises, crossing her face.

  Pain, vast pain.

  And then: peace.

  “But I've always thought 'home' should be something bigger than walls and doors, you know?” she asks me. Her eyes burn fierce. “It's got to be something that no one can take away from you.”

  Pain, sudden, harsh, pushes into my heart, too.

  I can't possibly know what it was like to grow up in the system, like Silver. How bad it must have been that she wanted no part of it.

  She was a kid when she chose to leave it, when she escaped.

  Just a kid, when she was living on the streets.

  She must have suffered so much. So much.

  My heart aches to even imagine it...

  Because the reality must have been much worse than I can possibly imagine.

  Truth tends to be stranger than fiction.

  “You know...I never told you the story of how I met your mother.” Her mouth turns up the corners, and she gives me the first real smile since we arrived at the pack compound.

  Interesting, that she mentioned my mom right after talking about home...

  But I don't even have to wonder about it.

  For Silver says, her voice low: “your mother used to mean home. To me.”

  I wondered about that. I wondered if, when Ma found a lost little girl in the woods, if all of her natural mothering instincts kicked in...

  Because of course they did.

  I have my answer now.

  Silver leans forward, rests her palms gently on my bare thighs.

  She begins to rub her hands back and forth, chafing my skin gently. Warming me.

  But her smile, when she looks up at me through her tangle of curls...

  That's warmth that I feel in the very depths of me.

  “I only knew your mother, Ana, for six months. But...th
ose were the best six months of my life.” Silver gives a little shrug, sitting back on her heels. She begins to rub my calves, now, her fingers plying my skin and my muscle.

  I sink back into the cot, feel her warmth radiating into me.

  “Anna found me in the woods,” says Silver. She reaches up, tucks a stray white curl behind her right ear, puts her head to the side as she bends to the task at hand. She pauses for a moment, sliding her fingers over my skin. And then she says, voice quiet: “I'd gotten caught...in a trap. My leg.”

  I must be frowning, for when Silver looks up at me to gauge my reaction, she leans back until she's fully sitting on the floor. She rolls up the bottom hem of her jeans a few inches.

  I stop, my breath hitching in my throat.

  I lean forward and I stare.

  How did I miss this?

  A thick, jagged white line cuts across Silver's skin—it encircles her calf.

  A toothed scar.

  “You're not supposed to use a foot trap where people have even half a chance of going, but you know folks in the country.” She gives a half-hearted chuckle. “You're never going to stop them from foraging and hunting and trapping...so they trapped a wolf. Me.”

  I move off the cot. I sink down on the floor before Silver.

  I reach out, brushing fingertips over her scarred flesh.

  Beneath my fingers, I can read it.

  I can feel her, feel her terror that day.

  I close my eyes.

  “I thought I was going to die,” she rumbles softly. “It was one of the forgotten traps, deep out in the woods. Rusted pretty badly, but not where it counted...not in the spring, and a tree root had grown through the chain pinning it into the ground. No one was going to come out and check that trap in enough time. I was never going to escape it by myself, and I certainly wasn't strong enough to pry it open, even in my human form. I was going to die there,” she whispers.

  I place my palm over the scar, curling my fingers gently over her calf. I lean forward, wrapping an arm about her middle, and together, we draw closer.

  “But then...” Silver breathes. “She just...appeared. Anna. She'd been out hiking in the woods, so she was wearing clothes, and I was terrified, too scared to scent that she was a wolf, too, so I thought...I don't know what I thought. I thought she'd come to kill me. I was lashing out. I bit her.”