Free When Winter Bared Our Bones by Emily Asimov Page A

zombie out of his thoughts, but it was her warm brown eyes and the eagerness reflected in them that reminded him of what he was trying to accomplish. “Yes, alpha. Leader of the pack. I threw down my father’s sword, discarded my father’s shield and armor, and became one with the pack.
      “The pack protected me and I protected the pack. Song of the Moon, a great she-wolf who had been mated to the alpha I killed, was the only hold out. She distrusted me and I her. Of course, I had no idea at the time that wolves mated for life or that wolves, or any creature for that matter, could pledge themselves so fully to vengeance. I was naïve about a great many things in those early days.”
      “But you were just a boy, scarcely old enough to be on your own let alone to know the ways of the world,” the girl said.
      For a long moment the zombie gazed at the girl and then he started as if awakened from deepest thought. He breathed in her intoxicating scent. The wonderful tang of fear and trepidation were giving way to something else. Something equally tantalizing. “A boy, perhaps, by today’s standards, but I felt I was a man, for with the spring thaw came my second year in East Anglia and I was by then fifteen.
      “I’d survived a harsh winter with my pack and spring brought us nature’s bounty. We hunted the woods with deadly precision, for what I lacked in speed and agility I made up for in cunning. I loved my pack. I trained them in the art of the lure and the trap and they trained me in the art of the hunt and the kill.
      “We dined on elk, deer, wild pig, game hen, river fish and wild horse. I loved tearing flesh from bone with my teeth. I relished the way beating hearts pumping blood slowed and became still. The way that blood bathed me as I fed.
      “We wanted for nothing. There was such abundance that every pup in every litter survived, making our pack stronger than it ever had been before.
      “But there was always Song of the Moon as a thorn in my side. I thought I could change that by mating with her and claiming her for my own, but that only made matters worse. Worse for the she-wolf. Worse for me.”
      “You mated with a beast?” the girl asked, her eyes full of disbelief and her voice full of an unspoken hesitation, as if she were thinking of something else.
      The zombie raised a halting hand as he leaned forward. His expression showed his surprise at the things unspoken. The smell of her restrained arousal fed his yearning. A yearning he struggled with just as he fought the bountiful hunger building within him. “Not as repulsive as you must think. You must remember that I was a wolf then, not a man. I knew nothing else.”
     

 
     
     
     
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    The girl shook her head. Her eyes watered. Her changing scent told the zombie many things, chief among them that the girl was not repulsed by the thought at all. True, something he had already known, but he had wanted to be sure before contemplating how to explore the new possibilities that suddenly occurred to him.
      “It’s all right,” the zombie said to reassure her. “I’m not as offended by your words as I pretend to be. It’s only that I forget from time to time that this is your first time hearing my story.”
      “But what did you do? How did you survive if Song of the Moon was against you?” the girl asked.
      “It was the coming of winter that changed everything. The cold set in early, as did the snow. At first, I didn’t know anything was wrong, but some of the elders knew almost at once. They tried to divide the pack, to chase away the young wolves.
      “I didn’t understand. I fought those elders, drove them away instead, and Song of the Moon went with them. My pack without its greatest elders wasn’t the same. The young wolves were full of vitality but they lacked the verve of the great elders.
      “The hunt and the kill were never the same afterward and much of what I taught the pack