Chapter 28

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We rode for an entire week before we even got to the mountains. We had enough money, but we had to make it last a long time if we were going to get to Rensland and back. Who knew how long it would take us to take down Jayla. We ended up sleeping in the woods a lot and eating as little as possible. Warren didn't seem to mind. In fact, most nights he didn't even use his bedroll, preferring to curl up beneath his cloak on the ground. I would have preferred an inn somewhere, but sleeping outside was something I got used to after a while. The few times we did try to sleep in a town, we had trouble getting a room because of our age. This close to the border, no one recognized a princess. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Part of me was annoyed. The other part was relieved, especially once news of my mother's death caught up with us.

We stayed away from towns that day.

The mountain pass into Rensland was heavily guarded. That proved to be a much more difficult obstacle. It was a three day trek around the guards and we had to sell the horses. There was no way we could sneak past the guards with them, and no way they could navigate the terrain. The mountains, despite being the shorter part of the trip, took another week to get through. There were no towns we could stop at for food, so we had to stock up beforehand and catch what we could on the way. Warren's skills were steadily revealing themselves. He could run as fast as a horse and still smell prey just as well as a wolf. He wasn't strong like my father, but he caught prey the same way he did - with his hands, and, on occasion, his teeth.

One night, he came back to camp without anything. I had a fire going, my cloak pulled around me for extra warmth. I looked up at him, but his shoulders were slumped. He flopped down on the ground and sighed. I focused on sharpening my knife to keep myself from thinking about the hollowness in my stomach. After a couple of minutes I snuck a glance at Warren.

He looked so vulnerable, hunched over by the fire, shivering from his bare skin's exposure to the night chill. There was something in his green eyes I hadn't seen there before.

He looked lost.

He knew where he was going and what he was doing, but I could tell from the way he stared at his hands that he was wondering what had happened to his claws and from the way he ran his tongue across his teeth that they weren't sharp enough.

Some sixth sense told him I'd caught him doing it and he looked up, glaring, daring me to say something about it.

"Warren-,"

"It's nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter. I just want to find my brother."

"I'm sorry, Warren. When I broke the spell I thought you'd be happy. I didn't think you might not be."

He glanced away from his hands and up at me for a moment with a bitter smile.

"Since when did you become a sympathetic?"

I scraped my knife across the sharpening stone so I wouldn't have to answer right away.

"I'm not," I said. "I just want you to be as dangerous as you can be when we fight Jayla."

Warren looked back at his hands, turning them over in his lap.

"You're right. I've got to be if we're going to get Klate back, but- it's just that...if I'm not a wolf," he said with that dead, hollow look, "what am I?"

I glanced down at my own hands and at the Woodsman's ax still in my belt. I thought about the blood those blades had drunk and wondered whether someday it would show on my hands, or if my cloak would just grow darker and dirtier.

"I don't know, Warren, but you're not the only one who's looking."

I pulled out the ax and watched the reflection of the flames in its blade.

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