Heartsong (Green Creek 3)

focus on, I couldn’t fucking focus.

Why did it matter?

Maybe one of the younger wolves had snuck it into my pocket and I’d forgotten I’d put it in the box. Rumor had it that a bunch of the girls (and some of the boys) had a crush on me. It was sweet. I sure as hell wasn’t going to do anything about it, but still. I had to give whoever it was props for being so forward.

I put the other items back in the box and closed it. I set it in the small opening and put the panel back in place. Maybe Ezra would know what this was about.

I opened the bedroom door. “Hey, Ezra,” I called out as I walked out of my room. “You’re never going to believe what I found. It’s—”

A pure white wolf stood at the end of the hall. Its head almost touched the ceiling. Its ears twitched.

I froze.

The hallway began to twist and bend, the siding cracking as pictures fell from the wall, glass shattering on the floor. The wolf took a step toward me as the ceiling split. The walls were bending, and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even take a step back, and the wolf, the wolf took another heavy step toward me, its paws almost as big as my head. Its claws scraped against the wood floor, leaving long scratches.

The house disintegrated around me, the walls exploding outward, the ceiling rising and cracking.

And then it stopped.

The wolf grinned.

It had many teeth.

I said, “Who are—”

The wolf ran at me.

I braced for impact.

The moment before it struck me, its eyes filled with a bright and terrible red, and the Alpha—

Passed right through me.

I bent over, clutching my head, the paper digging into my ear as wolves

howled in my head, pulling, pulling, pulling.

They sang:

I HOWL FOR YOU!!!

I HOWL FOR YOU!!!

I HOWL FOR—

“Robbie?”

I opened my eyes.

Ezra stood at the end of the hall, head cocked, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.

The house was as it always was.

The pictures hung on the walls.

The ceiling was intact.

There were no grooves in the floor.