They broke camp early the next morning. Asra and Margot were both eager to get back on the road and make up for lost time. Even Bane seemed keen on heading back home.

Home. Ciaran tried to avoid thinking of a situation in which he and Asra would fail, and he would no longer be welcome home.

The two shapechangers went out for a quick hunt together while Ciaran tacked up his and Margot’s horses—the least he could do for all her help the last several days. Bane watched Asra leave, his tail wagging sadly as he realized he wouldn’t be going with her. Ciaran wasn’t sure when the dog had become so attached to the shapechanger, and he forced himself not to dwell on the fact that they may have to say goodbye forever very soon.

The women returned to camp about thirty minutes later, both in their canid forms, Margot’s maned wolf towering over Asra’s gazehound. Ciaran caught their conversation as they approached him.

“You sure I can’t convince you to come?” Asra asked her. “I’ve got dibs on ripping off his head, but you could rip off an arm or something.”

Ciaran’s stomach lurched.

“Nah, some of us have jobs,” Margot said. “I was able to make a few deliveries while you were knocked out, but I’m already a week behind on some of these shipments. I’ll be lucky if I have any contracts left. Especially since I have to go up to wolf territory next. Impatient pricks.” She scratched in the dirt with one of her front paws. “Speaking of which … ”

Ciaran glanced up at her at her sudden shift in tone. Her brow was worried, her ears pinned back.

“What is it?” he asked.

Margot ran her tongue over her teeth as she considered her next words. “I’ll probably lose all of my contracts for telling you this, but … ” She looked to Asra, her expression hard. “Well, there’s a reason I’ve been tailing you two for weeks. Two reasons, I guess. First, there’s a fox city not too far from Windemere City. You’ll probably walk right past it on your way there.”

Asra’s eyes widened. Ciaran bit back his questions.

“I got a friend there,” Margot continued. “Good friend. But I ain’t heard from them in weeks. It’s not like them to go so long without talking.” She sighed and shook her head. “It could be nothing. But I can’t shake the feeling something’s wrong. Raises my hackles just thinking about it. I want to go check on them myself, but I have to get this stuff where it needs to go. I can’t take any more detours.”

Asra nodded, her face solemn. “We can’t take any detours, either. But if we happen to pass by … ”

Margot’s easygoing smile returned to her muzzle. “Thanks, hellhound. I’d say I owe you one, but all things considered, I’ll just say we’re even now.”

“And the second thing?” Ciaran reminded.

“Oh, of course. Wanted to warn yas that there’s been a lot more wolf activity in the area. Could be nothing, but … well, you know how wolves are.”

Asra growled, and Ciaran took that cue to assume how wolves were.

“Thanks, Margot,” Asra said. “Take care of yourself.”

“You, too, hellhound. Don’t pick any more fights with dragons.” She turned to Ciaran and said, “Be a better king than your brother, will ya?”

Ciaran smiled and said, “I’ll do my best.”

Margot curled her lip as she said, “Do better than that,” and Ciaran’s smile faded.

With a flick of her ear, Margot turned and headed towards her covered carriage. As she approached the wagon seat, she changed into her human form, fully clothed. She hopped up, then slapped the horses’ reins, and the carriage creaked forward and down the road.

“How come you can’t do that?” Ciaran asked as the wagon rumbled through the trees.

“Do what?”

“Change back into a human with all your clothes on?”

“Who says I can’t?” Asra said, flicking her ear. “Maybe I can and I just don’t want to.”

Ciaran raised an eyebrow at her, and she growled.

“Come on,” she said. “We have a long way to go still.”

----------------------------------------

The next couple weeks were the easiest days they’d had so far. It turned out Asra was rather pleasant company when she wasn’t constantly trying to rip Ciaran’s head off. They chatted briefly about the area, the weather, and any other small talk subject he could think of.

As the temperature dipped each night, Asra offered to let Ciaran and Bane sleep next to her, her fur providing the three of them with warmth. Finding a comfortable spot in the crooks of her prominent ribs and shoulders was always a challenge, but the heat she radiated was worth it.

Ciaran tried his best to keep his chatter to a minimum throughout their journey, and when he did speak, he kept the topics as neutral as possible. But as he ran out of neutral topics to discuss, he decided to take a risk on more dangerous topics.

“Is it all right if I ask you some questions about your people?” he asked one afternoon.

Asra’s eyes narrowed. “Depends on what you’re asking.”

Ciaran deliberated for a moment, his heart racing.

“Do you have a double suspension run?” he blurted.

Asra wrinkled her snout. “A what?”

Ciaran took a deep breath. “When you run, do all four feet lift off the ground twice in a single stride?”

Ciaran thought of the series of photographs released a few years back of a greyhound at the racetrack, each taking a sequential still image of its stride as it ran. Put together, they showed that the dog had two separate times when all four paws were completely off the ground—when its legs were tucked under the body and again when they were fully extended. It showed one of the ways that gazehounds were faster than other dogs.

Asra glanced upward as she pondered the question, then said, “Yes.”

“How fast can you run?”

“I dunno. Around eighty to ninety miles an hour? I’m not a sprinter. Other people in my town can go faster, but not for as long as I can.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Are you colorblind?”

Asra shook her head. “No, but I think your eyesight is a lot better. Why do you humans write everything so small?”

“Could you just change a specific body part? As in … give yourself a tail when human or something?”

Asra growled. “I told you, I’m never human. But no, it’s … like a sneeze. You either change or you don’t. There’s no in-between.”

“Does it hurt when you change?”

“Nope.”

“Would it be offensive for me to ask what breeds are in your family history? Your body structure looks a lot like a valley hound, especially considering the fact that your muscling is much drier than, say, a greyhound or whippet, but the feathering on your ears and tail would suggest saluki, and—”

“Is this really what you want to know about us?” She looked up at him incredulously. “You really are obsessed with dogs, aren’t you?”

Ciaran smiled sheepishly and said, “Sorry, I get carried away sometimes. I used to embarrass the hell out of Nolan when I was little. He says I wanted to be a dog when I grew up. I would get pulled into the receiving hall when important guests arrived at the palace, so that I could learn court etiquette. And there I’d be, on all fours, barking at the dignitaries like a puppy.”

Ciaran glanced at Asra, who smiled deviously. He cleared his throat and continued, “Anyway, Nolan never understood my obsession. I tried to explain to him that even if he didn’t like dogs, the ridgebacks were part of our family history, and a symbol of our kingdom. If nothing else, it was a connection to our mother. But it didn’t matter to him. Apparently, licking whipped potatoes out of a bowl on the floor in front of a duchess one time will get you banned from fancy dinners until you’re ten.” He sighed and said, “Just be glad you don’t have any siblings to deal with.”

Asra said nothing, and after a moment, Ciaran glanced over to see her expression. But she wasn’t next to him anymore. He twisted in the saddle to look behind him and saw Asra standing stock still several yards behind him. Her eyes were open, but unseeing, as if she were in a different world entirely.

Oh. Idiot.

He winced and brought the horse to a halt. “Asra, I’m so sorry. That was incredibly stupid of me to say. I wasn’t thinking.”

“’S all right.”

She slowly padded towards him, and when she was in line with the horse, Ciaran urged the mare forward.

“Was it … a brother?” he asked. “Sister?”

“A brother and a sister.”

His stomach twisted. How had he never known? Why had he never inquired?

“Were they older?” he asked.

“Both younger. My sister had just started school. Brother was a year younger.”

“I assume they both passed in the … ”

Massacre was the first word that came to his mind. He pushed it aside.

“Attack?” he finished.

Asra nodded, though she didn’t seem to be fully present in the conversation. Ciaran’s stomach churned.

The horse froze. She nickered and pawed at the ground nervously. Asra’s ears twitched and she raised her muzzle to the sky to sniff, Bane following suit.

“What is it?” Ciaran asked.

“Smells like a boar,” Asra said. “I smell magic, too.”

“Probably a mountain boar. They’re relatively common in this area.” The image of a massive boar the size of a carriage, coat etched with magic sigils, sprung into Ciaran’s mind. He scanned the forest vista, and his eyes landed on a small shrine. “Yes, there. There’s a god protecting this forest.”

He tugged the reins to direct the horse to the shrine, and Asra followed him. It was a crude structure, river stones hobbled together to make a small cave. Inside were offerings to the boar—carrots, potatoes, and other roots and tubers—and the outside was adorned with spears and arrows, a ritual showing that the visitors to this forest meant no harm to its protector by throwing down their weapons.

Asra glared at the shrine as Ciaran bowed his head.

“I didn’t take you for the religious type,” Asra said.

“Well, I’m not a zealot,” Ciaran said, straightening in the saddle. “But it’s always a good idea to stay on the gods’ good side.” He glanced at her and took note of her irreverent expression. “Your people have no love for the gods, I’m assuming?”

Asra shrugged her canine shoulders. “Of course not. No such thing as gods. They’re just dumb animals.”

“We used to worship your kind, you know,” Ciaran said with a smirk.

Asra snorted. “I know. And it proves how stupid your worship is. Plenty of us are just dumb animals, too.”

A wistful look came across Asra’s face as she analyzed the crude carving of a boar in the stone at the top of the shrine.

“What’s wrong?” Ciaran said.

“Nothing,” Asra said, shaking her head. “It’s just … My dad always talked about taking trips to hunt mountain boar. Never got a chance to actually do it with him.”

The homesickness in her voice pulled at Ciaran’s heart. In this case, he understood the feeling perfectly. He sighed and said, “I haven’t gone hog hunting much since the kennels burned down. It’s so hard to find people with good dogs who—what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Asra snorted. She gave him a withering smile and said, “There is no way you hunt hogs.”

“Again, what do you think my dogs are for? Bane is a phenomenal bay dog.”

“You hate blood. You’re way too squeamish. You couldn’t even handle bandaging a paper cut, much less bleeding out a pig.”

“Animal blood is different from people blood.” Asra’s snorts evolved into laughter and Ciaran said, “I’ll prove it to you.”

Asra choked and said, “Excuse me?”

“Let’s go hunt this boar.”

“Fuck no. Even if I believed you could take down a hog, I don’t have any plate or gear. I’m not spending another week laid up somewhere because I had to protect you from another magical beast.”

“So you’re just going to insult me and then not give me a chance to defend my honor?”

Asra’s expression was resigned.

Ciaran sighed. “Oh, you’re no fun.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, then Asra’s nose twitched and her hackles raised.

“What kind of wild dogs live around here?” Asra asked.

Ciaran considered for a moment. “None, other than maybe stray dogs and the odd red fox. We’re too far south for wolves and too far east for coyotes.” His eyes widened. “How many of your people live around here?”

“No idea,” Asra said. “I told you we stay hidden from each other.”

“Why?”

Asra shushed Ciaran, her ears twitching to and fro. He glanced down at his dog, who was similarly on alert.

Before he could ask any questions, Asra had disappeared in the trees, and Ciaran kept his gaze fixed forward, knowing at this point that this meant Asra was changing back into her skin and dressing. His assumption was confirmed when she reappeared fully dressed.

“What is it?” Ciaran asked.

“Shut up,” Asra said. “Stay close.”

Ciaran bit back his questions as they crested a hill, but he couldn’t help his gasp as the valley beneath was revealed.

A white wolf—far larger than any natural wolf—strained against the bear trap that held her hind leg. She snarled and tore at it with her jaws, but it was futile. Without hands, she’d never escape its grasp.

The pale lavender sigils swirling across the giant wolf’s coat confirmed that this was not a normal wolf—she was another shapechanger.