Ravensong (Green Creek 2)

In the back alley behind the diner, in front of Team Human, stood the timber wolf.

I hadn’t had much time to parse out its details when it’d come for me the day Elijah had arrived in Green Creek. I knew it was big, almost bigger than any wolf I’d seen before, but now, here, up close, I understood just how massive it was. Before Ox, Thomas Bennett had been the biggest wolf I’d ever seen. Before him, his father, Abel. Carter was bigger than his brothers, even Joe, his Alpha, but none of them compared to the size of the Omega in front of us.

Its eyes snapped to me.

I took a step back.

Its nostrils flared, and there was a brief moment when the violet in its eyes faded into a deep, muddy brown that I thought almost looked familiar, but then the violet returned bright as ever.

Only two ways out of this.

Through the alley behind the wolf.

Or back the way we’d come through the front of the diner.

Toward the hunters.

Tanner and Rico had their guns drawn but stood down, knowing gunfire would bring the attention of the hunters.

The knives hidden under Chris’s sleeves popped forward.

Jessie tapped Ox’s old crowbar against her shoulder.

The wolf wasn’t impressed.

It took a step toward us and—

“Fuck this,” Jessie said.

And before I could stop her, she pushed past me, took three running steps, and swung the crowbar upside the feral wolf’s head.

The crowbar

that was inlaid with silver.

The wolf yelped in pain as its head jerked to the side, a burning gash alongside its muzzle and cheek and up to its eye, which was squeezed shut and bleeding. It brought its head down toward the ground, pawing furiously at the smoking wound that hadn’t yet started to close.

“Come on,” she spat at us, dancing out of the way as the wolf tried to snap at her, missing by a good foot.

Rico and Tanner followed her, giving the injured wolf a wide berth. It tried to whirl on them, but Chris was there on its other side, slicing along the wolf’s back as he ran in the narrow space between the Omega and the brick wall of the hardware store next to the diner. The wolf turned its head, snapping its fangs after him, but he was already past it, running after the others.

Red dripped onto white.

The wolf turned to me.

It took a step toward me.

I raised a hand, the roses blooming underneath the raven, ready to end this now.

But then it faltered.

The wolf snorted, shaking its head violently side to side. The chain around its neck barely shifted, the links deep into its skin. It blinked its one good eye rapidly and lowered its face to the snow, pushing down into it, leaving streaks of blood behind it.

And I… I couldn’t do it.

“Gordo,” Rico shouted. “Move your ass!”

I moved.