(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 44; Dylan

In moments, they were stepping foot on the pavement. 

Tisper was starting to believe Quentin now, about his talented intuitions. She for one would have never found the way back. She'd be curled under a rock somewhere, hiding from the eerie howls on the wind.

Matt let Quentin take the wheel this time. He was too tired to protest. He fell asleep in the backseat, freckled face pressed against the window, but his head occasionally lulling onto Tisper's shoulder now and then.

She didn't ask any more questions. She didn't feel she had to; the wolf laid in the back of the wrangler, minded by Bailey, who fed him bits of chewed jerky and kept pressure on his wounds.

They drove back through the city, to a residential neighborhood where the streets snaked up along the incline of a hill. The houses were small but beautiful—nothing like the ones back home. Those yards were usually cluttered with waste—old rusty things that the metal scrappers and junk collectors couldn't bear to part with.

Here, the only eyesores sullying the green ornate lawns were stone birdbaths and tacky garden gnomes and things that glittered in the light and chimed in the wind.

Quentin pulled in to a house on the corner of the street, where a woman was already standing out front, a tiny infant cupped against her shoulder. She ran, barefoot to the wrangler, before it had even pulled to a complete stop.

"Where is he?" she was asking—yelling almost, dark shadows swelling under her teary eyes. "Where's my husband?"

Quentin put the emergency break on, shoved open the driver door. Then Leo did the same to the back and Tisper was rushed with the relief of the cool night air. She nudged Matt awake and followed out after Izzy and Elizaveta.

Quentin rounded the car, snapped open the hatch, and resting on Bailey's lap was the wounded wolf—asleep, but expiring with the longest, deepest breaths Tisper had ever seen a creature take.

"Oh, oh Dylan," the woman gasped. "Oh, honey."

"He's been stabbed," Quentin explained. "A shallow cut between the cartilage of his ribs. He'll be fine, but he can't turn until he's healed. It's a graze now, but if he changes—"

"I know," the woman said. "I know what happens, I know."

She looked so tired, her hand cupped to her forehead, shaking, just shaking her head. "Oh Jesus, Dylan."

"Someone get him off me," Bailey grumbled, trapped uncomfortably under the weight of the wolf.

"Kamilla," Quentin said. "We need to move him inside. Quickly."

"Of course. Of course." The woman stumbled backward, holding her child tight as it fussed from the raucous. "I'll run inside and open the garage. Thank you," she moved backward blindly, foot behind foot. "Thank you," she sputtered again. Then she turned, hurried in through the front door.

Quentin was fast, lifting the wolf into his arms. It looked heavy and Tisper saw the strain on his face as he struggled with the weight of the beast. But there was an unspoken urgency to move him in the darkness, away from watchful eyes.

The garage doors opened and they all followed behind, into the fire-warm den of the woman's home. It was small, cluttered with toys and clothes and things too large to hide from plain sight. Things like art pieces, stacked against the wall, half-packed boxes piled in the corner and furniture that had yet to be situated.

"I'm sorry for the mess," she said as she laid a blanket down on the floor of the den. Bailey helped to take the wolf from Quentin, lay the wounded beast on top. "We just moved and it's only me and the kids when Dylan's gone. It's impossible to get anything done with a newborn."