Brave are the Lonely Read online

  “Wait.” Cody ordered. He wasn’t entirely certain Kid would listen, but he wanted to scent the caves first. The wind shifted, swirling down from the northeast side of the mountain. The cold, brittle scents of snow sharply mixed with ice chilling the midday around them. Away from the horses, Cody focused. His nose wasn’t as sharp as the wolf’s, but he could still pick through the underlying scents.

  The musk of bear, but it was old. Likely a bear wintered in these quarters last year. Deer scat filtered from the leafier sides of the trail where it fell away at an angle from the caves. The cave entrance was high, high enough to allow the horses inside. He ventured into the shadows. A hint of wolf lingered around the rock entrance, but didn’t push past to the shale ledges inside. Cody could scent water, but the dusky recesses of the cave curved into smaller pockets that might lead back to the water around the bend, but the cave itself was dry. They could build their fire near the entrance, banking the heat into the recesses.

  High enough on all sides for the horses and still leave room for the men. It would do for their shelter.

  Outside again, he found Kid stripping the tack off the horses. Saying nothing, Cody hoisted the piled leathers, bags and blankets and carried them inside. He stored them to the left of the entrance before returning. The wind picked up a pace and if Cody were still in wolf form he’d have tilted his head back catching every flavor on the wind. The clouds to the north were gaining on them.

  “It’s going to snow.” He could feel the certainty in his bones. “Finish the horses, I’ll get wood. And then bathe. I’m not getting stuck in that cave with your stink.”

  Kid snorted. “I’ll bathe if you bathe.”

  “Fine.” Cody had no objections to that. The itch of his clothes against his skin made a bath, even an ice cold one, desirable. He left Kid to brushing the horses down. If nothing else, he’d learned from their month of traveling together, that the boy took care of his horse well. He never rested until she was seen too. A pang of what might have been guilt nudged out from under the rocks the wolf piled around their shared heart.

  Kid hadn’t begrudged his company, not once in their month-long westward trek. He hadn’t nagged at him, demanded answers or pushed. He hadn’t even been pissed when Cody knocked him on his ass after the mess at the Fort. Ducking into the underbrush, Cody considered all of these things while gathering twigs, sticks and setting to work stripping a fallen branch for enough fuel to see them through the rest of the day and into the night.

  Something about the boy had made him curious from their first face to face on the plateau in south Texas. The boy understood the wolf. A claim Cody couldn’t always make despite sharing the same body. The primal nature of his beast left him longing to escape into death with the loss of his mate. Wolves mated for life. Scarlett was that mate. She wasn’t dead, but she hadn’t chosen them.

  Cody paused on that thought. No, she hadn’t chosen the wolf. Cody didn’t really want her that way. Under the wolf’s assaulting need he’d dared a kiss; but if he were completely honest, the kiss felt wrong before she lit him up. The skin around his mouth itched at the memory.

  Carrying an armload back towards the cave Cody recognized that he’d turned wolf not because he’d needed to run, but because the wolf had. Throughout the wedding ceremony the wolf snapped, snarled and growled. It hated the sight of Sam putting his hands on Scarlett. When the happy couple vanished up to the house, Cody had been three steps behind them murder burning in his heart.

  He’d left because if he hadn’t, the wolf planned to kill Sam.

  Agony uncurled inside of him. He’d left to protect Scarlett and he’d driven the wolf away with him. They’d shifted, heading off into the night with the plan of letting nature claim them. But Kid was riding away. The wolf, even in the midst of his brain numbing grief, saw the boy leaving and wondered. The boy was like them.

  The wolf knew it.

  Cody set the wood down and accepted the simple truth the wolf scented long before the man could acknowledge. The boy—no, Kid—was like them. He was pack. From their first meeting the wolf sensed a kindred spirit, even in the angry heat of battle the wolf watched his back.

  He’d ridden out with Jimmy and Sam to scout ahead. The three returned to a bloody firefight on the plains surrounding the wagon train. The ambushers had taken a ridge for higher ground, their shots opening gaping holes into the wagons below. Cody dismounted, stripped and shifted without a word. The wolf could travel faster, scenting their positions and eliminating the threat from the rear. He’d killed two before flames began to threaten. Scarlett’s anger sent a cascade of orange, red and yellow hot fire after the men shooting at them.

  Cody avoided the fires as best he could, but he’d seen the man taking aim with his rifle and launched at him. He’d torn a bloody hole in him before the fire singed his fur and he’d been forced away. Racing down the washed out trail, he’d scented Kid before he saw him and the ambusher pointing his gun at him. Cody struck even as the rifle barked. The bullet missed the Kid and the man’s neck snapped under Cody’s jaws.

  Lifting his gaze, smoke billowing in the air around them, he’d seen the mortal agony contort Kid’s face. His ash covered skin couldn’t hide the paleness or the wild eyed pain in his eyes. His empty gaze was on the dead man, not the wolf.

  Somehow, Kid experienced the man’s death.

  The wolf’s only regret.

  He’d hurt the boy even as he’d saved him.

  Cody dropped the wood, the wolf’s memories a sharp, hard spike into his brain. He and the wolf shared a body, but he’d always believed they were two souls. The collision of the wolf’s assessment with his own thoughts made that truth all the harder. The wolf knew something about Kid that Cody hadn’t considered.

  “Hey,” Kid’s voice slapped him back to the cold present. “You okay?” The hand on his shoulder wasn’t a threat, the wolf didn’t even remark on it. Cody shook away the touch out of habit and allowed himself a nod.

  “We’ll need more wood.” He spared Kid a half-glance. Tension knitted around the boy’s eyes.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Are the horses settled?” Cody glanced at the beasts already stabled up in the cave covered in the heavy furs that Kid purchased in the Fort. Both were drowsy with food in bags and a single pail of water. He nodded, his question answered, and headed back out for more wood. “Get the fire started.” He tossed over his shoulder, not wanting the boy to follow him.

  The wolf knew something. It was trying to communicate the thought to him, but the harsh realization of the deep separation between wolf and man was chasing that thought away. The wolf wanted to protect Kid.

  No, Cody paused five yards from the cave with one foot on a fallen tree branch. The wolf was protecting Kid. He protected him on the trail. He protected him now.

  But why would the wolf protect Kid from Cody?

  Inside him, the animal was silent.

  On his fifth and last return from wood gathering, Cody found a damp Kid sitting next to the fire he’d ordered. The boy smelled of wood smoke, soap and cold water. The stench of sex and whore washed away in the mountain stream. Kid used a razor and a half mirror to scrape the stubble from his cheek. Cody stacked the wood, the rasp of blade against stubble, the crackle of the fire licking up the wood and the dozing snores of two horses the only sounds in the cold, pregnant hush awaiting the storm.

  Satisfied they wouldn’t run out of wood before morning and maybe into the next night if stuck here, Cody spared the boy an assessing look. In the last month Kid had grown. His shoulders broadened, his jaw squaring. He looked more like Sam than he had at their first meeting. But he’d lost weight, too. His lean build seemed thinner in the gathering cloudy dusk. And three angry pink scars slashed diagonally across his chest.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Cody admitted. The wolf hadn’t meant to scar the boy or hurt the one Kane that seemed to be on his side. But he’d taken the boy off a horse, swiping a bloody swath a
cross his chest in a moment of pique.

  Kid paused mid shave and shrugged. “I healed. And I’ve bathed. Soap is right there. It’s your turn.”

  An unfamiliar sensation tugged at the corners of Cody’s mouth. A harsh sound erupted from his throat, shaking his chest. Kid lowered the razor, his brows drawing together.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “What?” Cody managed around the rough sound rumbling in his chest.

  “You do know how to smile.”

  The laughter sounded foreign, but it felt good. One rude finger gesture and he grabbed the soap and another bag of clothes. He’d scrape clean what he was wearing at the water’s edge and bring it back to dry.

  The wolf’s continued silence echoed in the laughter rolling through him as though the dam against living had finally cracked. Or maybe it was Cody who cracked. At the water’s edge, he stripped, the cold wind slashing at his skin. He ignored all of it to plunge into the icy water. The frigid temperature lanced pain through every muscle. But he savored it.

  Pain was living.

  Denying pain is to deny life. One cannot live until one has experienced pain. Pleasure cannot be appreciated if one has no sense of loss. Value your pain for the lessons it brings, but hold it not so close as to deny life when it offers you respite.

  Quanto’s wisdom echoed through him. It was the old Indian’s favorite saying and it helped Cody through his early shifts when the agony threatened to tear him apart. It braced him when he feared the wolf would take him completely. The clarity of it rang true.

  Hip deep in the icy water Cody used the bar of soap to scrub his skin raw. He was alive. He’d died a little each day that Scarlett had been missing, his soul shriveling under the weight of the wolf’s demanding need to return to her. Her choice of Sam buried him further. But the wolf’s grief, no matter how real to the animal, was not his. For the first time since leaving Scarlett at the bank Cody recognized that his life was his again. The wolf stirred under his flesh, fur sliding against his skin.

  He wasn’t just the wolf anymore.

  He was a man.

  The wolf approved.

  Scrubbed clean of his past, dried and dressed, he carried his buckskins back to the cave. Chicory coffee added a new scent to the cave along with dried trail tack. His stomach rumbled in appreciation. Kid gave him a long considering glance but said nothing.

  Cody wasn’t certain why, but he knew he didn’t have to explain his epiphany. Kid already seemed relieved.

  He stowed his gear and scrubbed his hand against his beard. He’d keep it for now, even damp, it helped fend off the cold.

  Snow fell by the time they’d eaten and drunk the coffee. Kid rolled onto his side and snored, head pillowed on a saddle. Cody sat, watching the fire as the first puffs of white descended from the sky.

  When Buck sat down on the other side of the fire, Cody sighed. He must have dozed off. His native brother grinned, wide and toothy. “It is good to see you human once more.”

  “It’s good to be human again.” He could admit that to his brother now that he’d acknowledged it for himself. “How is everyone?”

  “They are well. Worried for you. Jimmy wants to hunt you down and beat you bloody for leaving.”

  “He can try.” Cody spared another grin. The sensation of smiling still seemed alien to him, but he enjoyed it. “Tell him I’m all right and that I’m sorry I left without a word.”

  Buck shrugged. “The journey of the spirit often takes us whether we will or not. You needed to go. Had you told us, we would have gone with you. But that was not the journey you needed to take.”

  “You think I don’t need my brothers anymore?” Wolf and man both disagreed with that sentiment.

  “I think you have a brother with you. A brother you needed and a brother that needed you.” Buck glanced to his right where Kid continued to sleep. Even in the dream, the cave remained exactly as it had been. Horses slumbering, fire crackling, snow falling.

  “He’s Fevered, isn’t he?” The question came from the wolf, but the moment the animal’s thought crystallized in his mind, Cody tasted the truth for what it was.

  “Quanto believes so. He approached Kid when the Kanes came to our mountain. But the boy denies it.”

  “What do you think?” Leaning forward, Cody put his hand towards the fire. Even in this dreamscape, the heat warmed his skin.

  “I think our father is a wise man and that one does not argue with his counsel. If he believes the Kane to be Fevered, then he is one of us. He is our brother.”

  “What about the others?” Worry slashed a piquant trail through his mind.

  “No.” Buck shook his head. “They are not. But this one is different. We cannot ask without alerting them to our concerns. He lives in denial, which can be dangerous to him and to you.”

  “To him maybe,” Cody agreed. “But the boy doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He just rescued two whores from their brothel and gave them his last coin to send them east to the Flying K.”

  “So you are west.” Buck grinned. “We wondered, but were uncertain.”

  “We’re somewhere in the territory of New Mexico. We’re heading west. Kid says California, but I think he’s just heading west to get away.”

  “He cannot run from himself.”

  Cody laughed again. “No, but he can try as we all have.”

  Buck nodded. “I will leave you to your rest, if you need us, dream to me and we will come. We can begin heading west now, but we will be weeks behind your trail.”

  “No.” Cody shook his head. “You’re still at the ranch with Scarlett?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then stay there. Keep our family safe. Watch the whores when they arrive, particularly the blonde one. She grabbed too easily to the gold that Kid offered. I will take care of this brother.”

  “Cody.” Warning gathered in Buck’s voice. “Be wary. Remember Jimmy.”

  He nodded. He’d already thought of Jimmy’s belief that he wasn’t Fevered. He grew up around all of them, their gifts so obvious and despite Quanto’s assurance, he never believed. That failure cost him in the deaths of others.

  “I will take care of our brother. You look after the rest of our family.”

  Buck held up his hand, a farewell, before fading.

  Cody’s eyes snapped open. Beyond the cave entrance the deepening night remained populated by snow and silence. But change was coming. He could smell it.

  Chapter 6

  Change was coming. Mariska smelled it. The storm clouds to the east stalled over the mountains, but long, slender crests of those clouds leaked west as though stretching out to catch the Travelers and scoop them into the bosom of winter.

  “Mariska,” her father’s voice deepened the absent h’s sound between the s and k of her name. “You will obey your father in this.”

  The argument with Heinrig Ur, her king and father, danced around the same tangle of contention.

  “My father would be wise to remember that women are not compelled to marry, they choose the man only after he has proven himself.” Tendrils of long dark hair jerked free of her scarf in the steadily growing breeze. Despite the cool sun overhead, the scent of snow was unmistakable. “We travel to meet the Romany, we will celebrate the solstice together, break bread together, but I will not marry because Heinrig Ur demands it.”

  Dragging her attention from the mountains, Mariska stared at her father. He was a thickly built man with long arms, fat biceps and the ability to split a three-foot wide log with one blow of his axe. He led their clan with wisdom, compassion and a surety of being. But he would not send her to the marriage bed of his choosing.

  That was not the way of the Romany and she was half-Romany. Beyond her father, Ancient Maia squatted next to the fire where the evening meal bubbled. They’d made camp for three days to allow the men to hunt, the women to gather and the mothers to tend their young. The horses were exhausted after the arduous mountain pass. The stew would feed them for a
week; rabbit, venison and wild boar meat adding to the richness of the flavor.

  “Mariska, you misunderstand. The need for peace in the Gaje land is paramount. We must find a place for ourselves. The mountains west are claimed by the Romany, to go there we must make a bargain, unite our clans and then we will share in the bounty of the lands.” Even as he spoke the words, she saw the grimace twisting her father’s mouth. He cared not for this plan he espoused, yet he would not let it go.

  “Then you marry him, father.” Done with the conversation, she snapped out a sheet she’d pulled from the drying line to fold. Every stitch of cloth and clothing in the clan’s dozen wagons had been scrubbed in the river they camped next to and hung to dry. When they moved on it would be with rested animals, clean linens and clothing, fresh food and every water barrel full. They would be free to travel twenty-five to thirty miles in a day rather than the ten they’d barely managed during the passage.

  “Ay, you are impossible. Ancient Maia, explain to your granddaughter the duty of a princess to her clan.” As with all contests of wills, Heinrig Ur turned to her maternal grandmother, her only living tie to the woman who gave her birth.

  Heinrig Ur won Siobhan’s affections, wooing her away from her own clan in the old world and together they brought their joined families across the sea by great ship to the Americas, pushing ever westward. The clans split not long after Mariska’s birth, with only some of the families staying with Heinrig Ur. When Siobhan died, only Ancient Maia remained with the Travelers, raising Mariska as a daughter. Her grandmother was a powerful seer, a gifted teller of fortunes and skilled diplomat. Only she could reason with Heinrig Ur’s foolish plans.

  “The duty of a princess is to select the strongest male to lead them, to bring into the family a man of vision and virility, one who will father many fine sons and daughters and keep true to the vision of the woman he married.” Ancient Maia looked up from the pot she stirred, her rheumy eyes fixed on Heinrig Ur. “Your daughter is a credit to the clan, not a foolish boy to be given to the first girl who notices him.”