The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(29)

He righted himself, wheezing raggedly. The animal panic clutching his heart subsided enough for a more rational panic to set in: Where do I go?

Adé’s face arose in his mind’s eye, but he shut it out. No, she wasn’t an option. He had no one but Omair. And now he’d lost even that.

A white flash lit the sky and he jumped. Lightning. It flashed again, and he saw he was in the Wangs’ soybean fields. He rubbed his dirty palms against the thighs of his pants to dry them, but the cloth was just as wet. He was soaked through; he needed to find shelter.

That was when he heard the dogs. Lightning flashed again, and for that brief illuminated moment he saw them: three lanky, underfed mutts, goaded on by the Wangs’ two eldest sons, brandishing sticks and whooping.

Nok ran, making for the edge of the imperial Northwood that crept in at the edge of the Wangs’ lands. Slipping on the rain-slick earth, he reached the lip of the forest. Night had truly fallen by now and he hesitated at the dense, dark press of trees. But he could hear the shouts and barks growing closer over his own ragged panting, and so he plunged ahead, kicking up damp clumps of pine needles and moss.

He threw himself upon the first hospitable tree he saw, leaping to catch the lowest bough. The sleeve of his tunic caught on one of its branches and tore as he shook it free. His wet boots scrabbled for purchase against the slippery bark. He’d nearly hauled himself up when the first dog’s jaw closed around his ankle.

A shout burst from him as he fell. The wet bedding of fallen leaves and brush did little to cushion him. His ears rung with the impact. The dogs were all around him now, nipping and snarling at his hands as he struggled to bring them protectively over his eyes. The dog that had pulled him down was still worrying his leg, though Nok noted dimly that it hadn’t broken the skin.

He hazarded a look between his fingers, but saw no evidence of the Wang boys. One of the dogs, drawn by the movement, seized Nok’s hand in his mouth. This time it drew blood.

The smell stoked them to a frenzy. As the teeth sunk deeper into his palm, Nok let out a panicked cry, wrenching his arm away. Stupid—the flesh tore, and blood poured from the gash. Heavy paws slammed against his back, sprawling him facedown against the ground.

I will die, he realized. If I stay here, I’m going to die.

Would that be so bad? He was never meant to live this long. Death had erred five years ago; it was past time to rectify the mistake.

No. Not like this.

He made to rise again, hissing as the pain in his hand flared to life. The dogs were back on him, leaping two at a time now, in waves, pushing him down.

Something else was there.

Nok sensed it dissonantly, like turning two pages of a book when he only meant to turn one—jerked out of his own sequence of events, and into a different reality. The dogs still bayed around him, but something in the air was different.

The rain had stopped.

The hairs on the back of Nok’s neck rose as a warm, powerful wind swept through the forest. It settled right above him and the dogs. A fresh shower of pine needles and bark rained down from the trees and he blinked furiously to keep it from his eyes. The dogs were lowing as though they’d been struck.

Nok opened his eyes and saw them slinking away, eyes wide and liquid with fear. He rolled over onto his back, breathing hard. His hand was still bleeding, but he no longer felt it. Or perhaps he no longer cared. Rising above the pain, above the fear, he felt a sense of oddly sedate eeriness. The dogs gave a final whine—the bravest among them verging on a snarl—then tucked tail and ran, leaving Nok alone.

No—not alone. Someone was there with him. Something. Nok pushed himself up with shaking arms, turned to face it.

And looked into the wet, glowing eyes of a wolf.

The creature was massive, half the size of Bo. Larger than any ordinary wolf.

But its eyes struck Nok as most unnatural—instead of nocturnal glinting gold, they were black and vast as caves.

Its stare was a heavy, tangible pressure on his skin. Nok knew he should look away, that returning the creature’s gaze would only agitate it, but he found himself frozen.

There were predators in and around Ansana. Foxes and coyotes and wild dogs. The odd cougar. But he’d never seen anything quite as large or majestic as the creature before him now.

Not since the Ashina had broken the Pact and lost their Gifts.

He felt no fear, strangely. He was too tired for that now. He was spent.

Fitting that this is how he should die: the last living Wolf, who never learned how to be a wolf, eaten by a wolf. He could have laughed in spite of everything, but something about the beast before him demanded solemnity.

The wolf advanced. Nok closed his eyes, waited for the blow of those tremendous paws upon his chest, the tearing of teeth on his throat.

I’m coming, Nasan. I’m coming, Ma, Idri. Ba . . .

Instead, he felt the creature still, standing over his body. It sniffed at his face, huffing, and its breath was a warm wind of earthy forest smells tinged with blood.

Nok opened his eyes. The creature was regarding him with almost human curiosity, appraising him in silence. A nighttime breeze sailed over them peacefully, lifted Nok’s hair, playing like fingers through the ruff of heavy gray-blue around the wolf’s neck.

Without quite knowing what he meant to do, Nok reached out and rested a shaking hand upon the wolf’s head.

A cavalcade of visions ran through him with the swift violence of a sandstorm, strange and slippery and visceral as a dream: