Author: Maria Vale
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: 3/26/2019
Born with one blue eye and one
green, Eyulf was abandoned as an infant and has never understood why, or what
he is...Varya is fiercely loyal to the Great North Pack, which took her in when
she was a teenager. While out on patrol, Varya finds Eyulf wounded and starving
and saves his life, at great risk to her own.
Legend says his eyes portend the end of the world...or perhaps,
the beginning...
With old and new enemies
threatening the Great North, Varya knows as soon as she sees his eyes that she
must keep Eyulf hidden away from the superstitious wolves who would doom them
both. Until the day they must fight to the death for the Pack's survival, side
by side and heart to heart...
Enjoy this excerpt:
I focus on the still-pink circlet of scars around his leg, pulling the
scar tissue gently apart with two fingers to see how elastic it is. Then I push
down, softly at first, and gradually harder. If it starts to swell or bruise,
the change will tear apart the underlying network of blood vessels.
He jerks.
“That’s a bad sign.” “What?”
“Well, it shouldn’t hurt that much.” “Doesn’t,” he says.
“This is not the time to hide what you’re feeling. If you change before
you’re fully healed, you will tear yourself open again. I know what I’m doing.”
He leans forward, his arms draped between his legs. “I’m not sure you
do.”
Ah. The towel that was barely adequate before is simply laughable now
that it is also responsible for covering a thickly engorged cock.
I look up, up, up to his eyes. They’ve changed, darkened. They are no
longer the pale blue of old ice and bright variegated green of forest depths,
but the deep blue of late evening and the dark green of rain- drenched fir. His
white hair loops forward and then falls over his shoulder. A sharp, green
muskiness like rubbed coriander bothers my nose with something warm and
dangerous.
I jump away, like a skittish fawn.
“I don’t think it’ll open up. Remember, your trigger is here.” I point
without touching toward the place I’d found before. “It’s inside, not outside,
so you need to tighten those muscles. But take your shirt off first.”
“Okay,” he says, pulling off his shirt. “Why?” “Because if by some
miracle you get it right, I’ll have to cut you out of it, and we don’t have
that many changes of clothes.”
Turning away, I smooth the T-shirt still warm from his body against my
chest. Philadelphia Frostbite Regatta, it says. When I glance back, his eyes
are closed and a tremor roils through the cut muscles. Parts of him around his
pelvis that don’t look like they could tighten any more ripple.
Sitting down on a dry trunk, I stare at the lower slopes of Norþdæl,
blanketed with wine and gray and dark gold, dotted with dark-green evergreens
and occasional skeletal fingers of white birch.
“How are you doing over there?”
“Working on it.” He coughs a handful of fake coughs, trying, I suppose,
to reproduce whatever caused that earlier change.
“Hey?” he says.
“Yes?”
“I’m going to be able to change back, right?”
“Of course. Once you learn what your trigger is, you’ll never forget
it.”
“Like riding a bike.”
I scratch my ear. “It’s nothing like riding a bike. You’re changing into
a wolf. Wolves don’t ride bikes.”
“It’s a… That’s not what I… Never mind.”
A squirrel squats on his hind legs, eyeing me from a distance. At this
moment, from this angle, the daylight moon forms a curved crown above his head.
“Except… you do know not to change before the Iron Moon, right?”
“Why?”
The squirrel’s whiskered nose twitches, worriedly. “Because the Iron
Moon takes us as she finds us and makes us wilder. If she finds us in skin, she
makes us wild. But if she finds us wild, she makes us æcewulfs. Real wolves. Forever wolves.”
“And you don’t change back?”
“That’s why they’re called forever
wolves.”
He stares down at his feet, clenching and stretching his toes, as though
confirming that for now at least, he still looks human. “Is it like when you’re
a wolf, but you still know who you are? You still remember everything?”
“Nobody knows what they remember or don’t, but they’re definitely not
the same. They’re not Pack any- more.” Over my shoulder, I see the panic on his
face, his hand clinging to the little towel, like the last vestiges of his
humanity.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let that happen to you,” I say. His eyes consider
mine for a moment. I nod at him, and he starts again, pressing harder, moving,
clenching, roiling, undulating.
The squirrel takes advantage of my distraction and bolts up a nearby
tree. High up, he hangs, head down, legs splayed, and chitters at me for
invading his territory.
“Varya!”
I leap at Eyulf’s strangled cry, just managing to catch him as he
pitches forward, his feet narrowing, arch elongating, calf muscle tightening.
How
did I forget to tell him to lie down?
I stagger to the ground, his body writhing in my arms. His green eye
searches blindly, his grotesque mouth mangles a groan before going silent. The
towel drops away from his narrowing hips and his clutching fingers. My hair falls
forward over him.
Astille,
wulf. Þu eart gesund mid me.
Hush, wolf, you are safe with me.
My hands run over his skin, like water.
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About the author:
Maria Vale is a
journalist who has worked for Publishers Weekly, Glamour magazine, Redbook, the
Philadelphia Inquirer. She is a logophile and a bibliovore and a worrier about
the world. Trained as a medievalist, she tries to shoehorn the language of
Beowulf into things that don't really need it. She lives in New York with her
husband, two sons and a long line of dead plants. No one will let her have a
pet. Visit her at mariavale.com.
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