Amber Silverblood: Silverpack

Chapter Thirty Three

I leaned over the piping hot bowl of cheese-and-broccoli soup and breathed in through my nose. Not only did it smell like the best thing in the world, the delicious steam helped to clear my stopped-up nose just a little. Sitting back, I grabbed another tissue and blew into it, which my mom promptly plucked from my hand and threw into the trash can. It was already nearly half full of them.

"I can't believe he made you climb that mountain in the middle of the night!" she clucked, adjusting the blanket on my shoulders while I scooped a spoonful of soup into my mouth. "And in weather like this, too!"

The wind howled outside the cabin, throwing snow into the air like we were in the middle of a blizzard. It was odd, the night had been calm right up until I got into the cabin. Almost as soon as I'd shut the door behind me, the storm had appeared out of nowhere. The winds blew so hard that I could hear the timbers in Stark's cabin groaning, but the house held fast.

"It's irresponsible of him," Mom fussed.

In truth, I was barely listening. The soup's heat and flavor coated my tongue, making me roll my shoulders in appreciation. Normally my wolf wouldn't be okay with eating something without meat in it, calling it "prey food," but my mom's cooking was so good that even the big grumpy beastie inside me couldn't find anything to complain about.

"It's not that bad," I said once I'd swallowed. "He... had a good reason for it."

I looked down into the swirling colors of my soup and bit my tongue. As much as I hated saying anything good about the murdering creep, I wasn't going to let myself become Kimberly. Even if he had killed my dad, Stark was obviously trying to make up for it now. As long as he was me, Mom, and Kimberly's only defense against Hendricks and Majestic, the least I could do was try to see the good in him... even if it physically hurt to do so.

"I'll have to have a word with him," Mom insisted. She was in the kitchen again, fixing a mug of hot tea for me. For anyone else she would have made hot chocolate, but you know she's a good mom because she made a special effort not to poison her only child.

"Mom, seriously," I snorted, taking another bite of soup. "We're tougher than you think. I got cold, but it's not like I'm going to get frostbite or anything out there."

I wasn't exactly sure about that point, to be honest. It had taken me more than an hour to get up the hill, and when I finally succeeded and made it back to Stark's back yard I was shivering uncontrollably crazy and absorbing moonlight for strength like a sponge. Mom didn't need to know that, though.

"What were you two even doing out there all this time?"

I looked up at her in surprise. Had Stark not told her? No, of course he hadn't. She just about had a heart attack every time I left for school. Finding out he was teaching me how to fight would probably put her in the morgue— and unlike Kimberly, she wouldn't wake up again afterwards.

"Nothing," I lied. Mom gave me one of her patented I can see straight through you, young lady looks, and I busied myself by picking up the bowl and drinking the rest of the soup in one big slurp. It burned, but it burned so goooood.