Free Fox Afield (Madison Wolves) by Robin Roseau Page B

place.
    "I love you," she said. "I am going to win."
    "I know," I said. "The wager was my thank you. Get your ass in gear and make me proud of you, Lara."
    S he moved cleanly up the wall. I took my time to get past my one difficult point, and Lara was well over the top before I was ready to finish my climb.
    I kissed her at the top and took my ride down.
    "It's hardly a fair wager," Lara said once we were at the bottom. "My body is much bigger than yours."
    "I know," I said, eyeing her up and down. "I'm glad I won."
    "Perhaps you didn't notice," Lara said. "I won."
    "Perhaps you didn't think about the implications. I get to run my hands up and down your magnificent body for an hour while you lie there and let me."
    Lara laughed.
    "We're done here," Brooke said. "We have lunch planned, then a more difficult wall, if you're up for it."
    "Excellent!" I declared. "More wagers."
    "Sorry, not on this wall. We're going to teach you how to set equipment in the wall this time. You'll be belayed both from the top like we did here and from a climbing partner as you ascend."
    "What do we do about the equipment at the top here?" I asked. "Does it stay up there?"
    "I'll go get it," Brooke said. She turned to the right and began jogging along a trail I hadn't noticed before. The rest of us packed the gear we had, and twenty minutes later, Brooke caught up to us.
    Simone had a portable grill with her and a cooler of food. We had steaks and brats. She had some chicken for me, which I enjoyed more than the steaks. We ate, cleaned up, then hiked to the other climbing location. It was a shorter hike, but the wall looked intimidating.
    "If you were human," Simone said, "There is no way you would be ready for this wall. But you're all big stubborn wolves," then she looked at me. "Or perhaps wolf-wannabes." I grinned at her. "I am going to head up to the top and drop the ropes down. Brooke can explain what we're doing."
    Brooke spent a while showing us the equipment we would use on the way up the wall. The plan was for us to be belayed from the top, but we were going to treat the climb as if we were belayed only by the anchors we were installing ourselves. "Michaela, you and I will go first."
    Simone dropped the ropes down but didn't take a ride down. Instead she reappeared a few minutes later from the trail to our left. She set up Gia to belay Brooke and she belayed me. I put on a small backpack with climbing equipment, hooked up, then Brooke checked me carefully. "I'll do the first twenty feet. Once I am ready, you will follow after me, removing the equipment I'm putting in. Then you'll go up twenty feet and add equipment." She helped me attach myself to the wall and said, "You belay me here."
    I watched her climb. She faced the wall, climbed ten feet, then said, "The twenty feet starts here." She found a crack, wedged an anchor into it, wedged a second anchor into the same crack several inches away, then clipped our rope through both of them. She repeated that every five feet. Once she was thirty feet above me, she installed several anchors, then leaned back into her harness, testing them. "All right, Michaela, I am on belay. Climb up after me and to my right, removing the anchors I already installed."
    I climbed slowly, pulling out the anchors as I went. They were lodged in good, and I had to work them back and forth to slide them out of their cracks. I arrived even with Brooke.
    "Leave this one in," she said. "You will notice I used extra anchors here. Climb until you find a place you can really anchor yourself."
    I climbed up five feet, found good places for anchors, and wedged them in, testing them before clipping the rope through them. The next good place was four feet further, then seven feet after that, then almost ten feet. I installed a pair of anchors at that point, then meticulously set up more anchors to hold myself in place. I tested it cautiously, then more firmly until I felt fully safe and comfortable.
    Working in a leapfrog