The Alpha's Oracle (SAMPLE, IronMoon #1)

Underestimated

Gabel would have left me there. I didn't delay in my grim task, because if I had thought too much about it I would have lost my nerve.

Splattered with the blood of multiple wolves and with the taste of more blood in my mouth, and the scent of grief and blood and thanks in my snout, I loped up the hillside in pursuit of the Iron Moon.

In pursuit of my pack.

It was very surreal to think of them that way, or to feel the instinct pressing in my chest that I had to be close to them, that I had to get back to them, that I couldn't be left behind. My distress that they would leave me behind.

My brain just reeled. But as an Oracle, I was used to being overwhelmed with a thousand thoughts and emotions and things clouding my brain. I had been trained to deal with them. Others might have wandered around in a stupor or staggered but I just ran after the Iron Paw and chased the promise I would rationalize everything later.

Gabel would have left me there to prove a point: that the wolves didn't matter, and my choice to deal in mercy didn't matter either.

I caught up with them a mile up the forest. I shoved my way through the males up to Gabel's shoulder.

He looked more like a Hound than ever with blood clumping his ugly, oily fur and death on his breath. He turned one amber eye to me to acknowledge me as I fell into place by his shoulder, but did not slow his pace. Instead, he increased it.

I suppose they had sort of waited for me.

Sort of.

I'd tell you that I didn't remember finishing those wolves off, and that my mind hid it from me behind a dreamy veil. But that would be a lie. I remembered all of it, as if the Moon had etched it into my brain like Her sharpest vision. I would never forgot even the smallest detail of what I did in that forest that day. The only thing that kept it from eating my mind was that it had been the right thing to do. The thing that I would have wanted for myself, or for any wolf from my pack.

And I hoped to the Moon that the Iron Moon hunters found those cowardly RedWater runners and tore them into a thousand shreds. I had given the fallen a good death. A merciful death.

A warrior's death.

Late that night Gabel left our bed for an hour, then returned. "The hunters are back."

I had laid awake until that time, unable to sleep. "Success?"

"Yes."

I managed to sleep a bit. At least something had gone right, and the hunters had punished the cowards who had abandoned their packmates.

In the morning at breakfast the hunters were acknowledged for their success. Gabel raised his cup to them all, and Master of Arms Flint led the howl that celebrated returning, victorious warriors.

"We shall send this," Gabel raised a cloth bag filled with many small objects. "To the RedWater! So that Alpha Travis knows not only is he an arrogant fool, but his warriors are cowards."

More howls.

The hunters had pulled the cowards' canines. Pulling a wolf's canine teeth was a desecration of the corpse. A final humiliation and exactly what those cowards had deserved. They hadn't really fled, Gabel had told them to run, and then they had left their packmates to die. That made it a suitable punishment.

But there seemed to be more teeth in that bag than there should have been.

Only six wolves have fled, if I remembered correctly.