Free Wolf Bride by T. S. Joyce

became eerily alike. “Thank you, Kicking Bull. Is there anything you lack?” Luke asked.
    “Not now,” the old man said. “This information is to maintain our alliance.”
    “Well, take these to your grandson’s just the same,” Luke said, pulling two peppermint sticks from a sack he’d retrieved from the general store. He tipped his hat before the men disappeared into the woods.
    When Luke was seated again with reins in hand, he asked, “Mind telling us how much trouble we’re in, Ms. Yeaton?”
    The formality of my proper name on his lips stung. I clamped my mouth shut, unwilling to talk about it before I sorted through my racing thoughts. I thought I would’ve been long married before her lackeys showed up. Luke would’ve had a reason to protect me then. But now? My heart pounded in my ears like the roar of a steam engine.
    I was as good as dead.
    The silence that followed was filled with a slow fury. Luke didn’t spare a glance for me the rest of the night. He was angry with my quiet refusal to tell him about my past, but every time I opened my mouth to confess the danger I’d put he and his brother in, the words got caught in my throat until I was drowning. The moment I told him would be the moment he told me to pack my bags, and the selfish, horrible little bits of me wanted to hang on to my home for every last second I could.
    Dinner was a miserable affair filled with pushing my food around my plate and daring not even once to look into Luke’s disappointed eyes. He and Jeremiah disappeared after dinner to button down the hatches in preparation for the imaginary storm and I retired to my room to tidy the things Matthew Streider and Ricky Burns tossed around. I was angry with the idea that those awful men touched my undergarments. The only man I wanted seeing or touching those was furiously working to avoid me. If I listened hard enough, I could hear an occasional distant murmur as he and his brother tossed orders back and forth.
    Damn those beastly trackers for ruining everything.
    Sleep came fitfully. The boys hadn’t come in as far as I could hear and I was too cowardly to peek my head outside the door and check to make sure. I dreamt of horrible things—creatures with glowing eyes, and snarling fangs snapping at my ankles as I ran through the forests in search of safety. Just as I would feel I lost them, the creatures of the night would reappear in front of me and chase me back where I came from in a loop of endless circles. Though my legs never tired as was sometimes the case in the fog of dreams, I never got a break from the rampant fear that tore at me either. I woke with a start to the sound of my own screams, only to realize they weren’t mine at all. They were the screams of the wind outside my window.
    How had those Dawson boys known? The smooth wood of the window frame was cool under the palms of my hands and I searched in vain for the voices I could’ve sworn I heard through the howling of the storm. There. One short yell wafted to me on the whipping currents. My eyes were strained, yet I still failed to see anything past the sideways rain that pelted the house.
    What if that was Luke yelling for help out there?
    I flew into action. I didn’t pay any mind to trivial things such as shoes or a shawl to cover the thin cotton of my nightdress. I only sought to get to him as soon as I could. Something had gone terribly wrong, and the very marrow in my bones sang with urgency. I fumbled in the darkness, but familiar enough with my surroundings, I searched the tables with the pads of my hands until they landed on an unlit lantern and a set of matches. My trembling fingers dropped the first but ignited the second and when it was lit, I shut the small hatch and turned the lantern up as bright as it would go. Bolting out the door, I didn’t even bother to shut it behind me.
    I froze on the porch, desperate to realize the direction the yelling was coming from but the wind carried the sound to and