Blind & Broken

Chapter Nineteen

Fleur is there for me every step of the way around the reserve: from the back door of Alexis' house and down the hill to the wolf pen and so forth. When we reach the wolf pen, it's hard to contain my shock that she has wolves here, given her best friend is one. I know Kaitlyn said Alexis is oblivious, but it's a little ironic.

Bang! I jump, startled at the sudden noise. Fleur's tongue darts out and licks my hand, as if she's trying to reassure me.

"Sorry!" Alexis calls from a slight distance. "That was just the door to the shed, I'm getting some meat to feed our boy Fang here." By the end, her voice is clearer, as if she had walked through the doorway and back over to us.

"You actually have a wolf in there right now?" I whisper. It probably comes off that I'm afraid, which is silly to me but probably sensible to Alexis.

"Don't worry, we've got a protective fenced-in area for him to be in. And he's pretty docile for a male."

A part of me wonders if she's ever had a werewolf in there and just didn't know it. Maybe "Fang" is one of us. There's no way she could really tell the difference. I've heard we're bigger than the wild wolf but would she pick up on it?

"It's not," Taylor's breath tickles my ear and I shy away.

"Hm?"

"It's not one of us."

My breath hitches as I realize she could tell what I was thinking. Coincidence? I'm beginning to think the princesses are hiding something I can't quite put a finger on. Or maybe they're not hiding anything and I'm just oblivious to the obvious. Stop overthinking! I scold myself.

Fleur nudges my hand and we keep walking. The ground is uneven and I nearly roll my ankle several times. We seem to be walking in a wide circle. I can't determine whether it's just the wolf pen or if there's a body of water nearby.

We walk mostly in silence, and it's because of this silence that I start to be able to feel a sort of buzz coming from ahead of me. At first, I assume it's a bug, and I actually swat the air around me, catching Taylor's arm as I swing about rather ungraciously.

"Ouch!" She laughs, "you okay?"

"Yeah, there's just —" come to think about it, a buzzing bug would not be present in the middle of November. "Never mind, I don't know."

She chuckles again but drops it. I concentrate on the buzzing, gripping Fleur's leash in my left hand and letting her do all the work as we walk. I know Taylor is directly to my right — probably in case I stumble — and that Alexis is leading us somewhere up ahead. That means Kate is probably up there too, either in between me and Alexis, or next to her. If Kate's in front of me, and that's where the buzzing is coming from. . . Was Kate creating it? Focusing again, I found it to be more of some sort of electricity, and it grew stronger as we walked forward.

"Watch out for the pond!" Alexis calls from ahead. The dog pulls me sharply to the right, nearly causing me to trip over her. "Sorry, even I almost didn't realize it was there! It gets sort of marshy this time of year and the weeds turn brittle as they fall, covering the bank up and making it impossible to see." She laughs, clearly amused she nearly led us right into the soggy edge of the water.

We keep going, and now I can tell the electricity coming from Kate fades the farther we get from the bank. I'm not sure which is stranger: Kate having some sort of association with water, or the fact that I can sense the buzz at all!

"Here we have our foxes and raccoons." Alexis stops us up short. "They share an area but are divided by a fence running through the middle. We have one fox right now, but no raccoons. They're meaner and prefer to take care of themselves." She keeps us going, Fleur happily staying at my side and leading me exactly where Alexis is taking us.