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He and Javier drag John in from the mountains just hours before a snowstorm sweeps over their makeshift camp, rattling the timber frames and howling through the chimneys.John’s wounds are ragged and bleeding sluggishly, sure to scar but saved from festering by the cold. Serves the goddamn idiot right for wandering into another pack’s territory, Arthur thinks, even if said pack weren’t Shifters but wild wolves. He suppresses a curl of guilt for the lead he shot into the creatures as they chased the three of them down the mountain, but it had to be done for survival’s sake. Still, he dislikes killing his own wolf kind just as much as he don’t like killing innocents. Dislikes killing wolves even more, perhaps. They just beasts, ain’t done nothing wrong; people, on the contrary, continue to astonish him with their capacity for wrongdoing. Even the innocent are seldom so pure.But Arthur ain’t one to be preaching about morals and the like. He washes the wolves’ blood from his skin as much as he can with water warmed slightly over fire, but it seems inclined to stain, so eventually he sighs and pulls his gloves back on. The leather feels tight over his frost-swollen knuckles. He misses his paws, misses running on four feet ‘stead of two.Part of him’s tempted to shift—be a helluva lot warmer under all that fur, that’s for sure, but the mere thought of having to strip first turns his skin to gooseflesh. Christ, it’s cold already, he can’t imagine being bare-ass naked.He craves it, though. Hasn’t felt the comfort of his wolf’s body since sometime before that whole Blackwater mess. The craving manifests itself under his skin like an itch with sharp nails; he can feel the beast building just below his sternum until he feels fit to burst.Some of the women have shifted. He checks in on their cabin to find Tilly and Mary-Beth huddled together in a mass of grey and russet fur, shivering but looking considerably less frozen than the rest of them. They acknowledge Arthur’s entrance with baleful glances. Karen leans against Mary-Beth, bottle in hand.“Arth’r,” she slurs in welcome.“Karen.”At the far end of the room, Abigail sits by John, who they’ve set up in here just until the weather clears. Poor Abigail’s hands are clenched in her lap like she’s holding them back from springing forward of their own God-given will and checking again that John’s really there. To be fair, the bastard looks as if he could slip away at any moment, despite Hosea’s assurances that he should make it.Jack’s shifted too, probably on Abi’s insistence that he keep warm. Curled at her feet under a blanket, the boy looks downright miserable. His ears are pressed flat against his head. In the glow from the fire, his grey fur looks warm brown, almost golden. Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever seen a sight so worth protecting, and, for all the bad in him, he hopes it must be worth something that he’d give his life and tenfold for that boy.“Hey, Arthur,” greets Abigail, soft so as not to disturb the others, voice gentler than a dove’s wing. “Thank you. For bringing him back. I—I know I said it before, but I’ll say it again—thank you. I—the boy—would be devastated if… if his Pa hadn’t…”“‘S alright, Abigail,” says Arthur. He meets her honest gaze before tucking his chin further into his lapel and averting his attention to the snow on his boots. “Jus’ glad we got him back ‘fore this storm swept in.”“It is a mighty one,” says Abigail. “For sure.”“For sure,” echoes Arthur.By tomorrow morning, the blizzard has cleared. The sky’s a pristine white, so white it blends with the snow on the ground like there’s no horizon between them, white like the lace on a rich lady’s dress, like the sunken white of a dead man’s skin. Arthur wants to draw it, commit it to paper, but his hands are too stiff with cold to work anything as delicate as a pencil. He defers to memorising it, intending to recreate it after this hell’s passed and they’re tasting spring.It isn’t long before Pearson orders him out of camp to scrounge up some meat. His stomach clenches at the idea of something proper to eat that ain’t canned shit and dry crackers.“Do you, uh, mind a few bite marks in it?” asks Arthur. He ain’t never been the best at hunting with a gun nor a bow. Hunting people, sure, that’s easy, but animals are tenfold more unpredictable.“Use your teeth or a bullet or your bare hands for all I care, Mr. Morgan, just as long as you bring something back,” Pearson says. “We won’t last much longer without it.”“I hear ya, I hear ya.”Arthur’s heading back to his room to change out of his clothes, intending to shift quickly and quietly, when Charles intercepts him, wanting to know if he could use help on his hunt.“There are wild wolves out there,” Charles reasons. He’s wrapped a scarf round his head so only his face is bare to the cold, and his thick coat makes the wide width of his shoulders look even broader.“I think I can handle a couple’a mutts,” says Arthur, not quite certain why he’s arguing. Truth be told, he’d appreciate the company. Not sure he wants to subject Charles to the likes of him as company, though.Charles hums, a low rumble in his chest, like a thoughtful growl. “Probably what John thought too.”“I ain’t no John.”Charles stares at him contemplatively for a moment, before Arthur huffs a puff of frosty white air and relents, “Sure, c’mon. Two’s better than one.”“Thank you, Arthur.”Arthur nods.They part ways to shift privately. Arthur strips efficiently, mechanically, clenching his teeth as he shucks his jacket first, then the rest of it. Jesus, he’s never been so cold, ‘cept maybe during a particularly bad winter way back, when he caught sick and felt the hottest and coldest he’d ever been in his life all at once. He doesn’t bother folding his clothes, but, unbidden, finds himself wondering if Charles does. Somehow, Arthur imagines that Charles shows the same amount of care to his clothes as he does everything else.Giving into the shift after so long is like sinking into a too-hot bath; it stings, feverish and cruel, but only for a moment. His bones creak as they adjust to the stretch. His mouth protests the sharp canines pushing through his soft gums, and he barely holds back a whine at the sensation of peeling flesh giving way to fur. But once submerged, he’s pleasantly warm, an appreciative growl rumbling through him. Shaking himself into his new skin is like sliding into a well-worn glove.Charles meets him at the entrance to Colter. Disregarding Bill’s stocky build, Charles is the largest wolf in the pack. He and Arthur are matched in height but outweighed in muscle; Charles has a certain power to him that Arthur sometimes thinks is all in the way he carries himself. Shifters are a fair way larger than the average wolf, for sure, but together he and Charles make any wolf look like a timid house dog.Briefly, they lock eyes, Arthur’s blue fixed to Charles’ amber. Arthur doesn’t know anyone but himself whose eyes keep their color in the shift; all the others melt into that wild orange. Just another thing wrong with him, he supposes.Chased by Javier’s call of Bring us back something good, will you? We’re sick to death of rabbits, Charles and Arthur make a slow trek out of camp. Snow falls lightly, dusting their hides a speckled white. Charles’ fur, a gradient of charcoal greys against his stark white muzzle and chest, is like an intricate tapestry beside Arthur’s solid black. Arthur feels like an omen, a black streak of death through the snow.The silence between them feels… companionable. Arthur’s been on two-man hunts before where the inability to speak has felt like God’s own curse, awkward and stagnant. But Charles slots beside him easily. Their pace through the snow falls in perfect sync, even though Charles’ front paw holds the remnant of a limp from a healing burn.Before long, they catch the trail of an elk. Arthur senses Charles slow beside him. In a perfect mirror of each other, they both flatten themselves into the snow, skulking silently onwards. The biting cold becomes a numb distraction as the smell of blood and flesh draws closer. Arthur’s mouth salivates. His stomach pangs. Involuntarily, his tail twitches. Charles is acting much the same. Their hunger, to any onlooker, would be palpable.Despite their respective sizes, the elk dwarfs them both, crowned with wicked sharp antlers and wild eyes. If they don’t work together just right, it’ll do worse to them than what them wolves did to John. Arthur sees an image of himself gored open, head lolling and mouth agape, entrails spilled like nickels from a purse. The thought doesn’t bother him much. Then he imagines Charles, dead, and is hit with a spur of determination.For the second time, they share a glance. An understanding passes between them. Charles nods, a slight downwards tilt of his grey and white head. Arthur returns it, then looks away.Hunting’s just like shooting a gun, is what his father told him an age ago now. Focus. Breathe slowly. Always go for the kill on empty lungs.He breathes in.Breathes out.He’s been a coiled spring ever since Blackwater, taut and pent-up. Full of energy and nowhere for it to go.In the span of a second, the spring snaps.Arthur goes for the neck; Charles, the back legs. Arthur’s sharp teeth pierce the skin with ease, like a knife into overripe fruit, but the blood that blossoms over his tongue is twice as cloying as any apple. The beast bucks, whining and braying with wild abandon, terror sending its eyes rolling back in its head. Arthur holds fast, clamping his jaw tighter even as the elk makes a desperate attempt to run, legs buckling like snapped twigs. Blood spurts around his mouth; his fur is wet and filthy already.He can just about see Charles, stuck with the more perilous task of dealing with the other end of the animal, where a kick from a hoof could end in a nasty bruise at best. At worst, broken bones or a collapsed skull. Charles, of course, remains steady as ever, claws digging deep into flesh. Thin rivers of blood drip down the animal’s hide and spatter poppy red over the snow, like a bloody meadow.An arduous few minutes pass filled with the weakening whines of a creature losing its battle with death—or, more accurately, its slow, helpless death under the teeth of two starving wolves. The is no battle. No fight. It’s a waiting game: waiting for life to leave it, the last tendrils of smoke from a dying fire, coals too far blackened to be relit. Arthur wishes they could speed the process up.He feels the struggle come to an end with a final spasm and a wet gasp. Grunting, he loosens his jaw, licking at the blood now staining his muzzle. It’s coppery sweet like metal and sugar.Charles’ pretty coat is mottled with red now. His gaze lingers on the elk—whether in some kind of sorrow or apology, Arthur does not know. Maybe he’s saying a prayer, sending it off to heaven, or whatever his culture’s equivalent is. It’s a nice thought. Real pretty.They drag the corpse back to camp, smearing behind them a long trail of blood already in the process of being buried in fresh snow. Somehow, the silence feels different this time. A shift has taken place.Arthur trudges back to his room and Charles to his. Sheds his fur and replaces it with clothes meant for a man. All of a sudden, they don’t seem to fit right. He wonders if Charles really does fold his own clothes as neat as Arthur imagines, before realising it’s none of his business and it don’t matter anyway.“So you… you’re all wolves? All of you?”“Sure, how else could we call ourselves a pack? Well, most of us are, anyways. Molly ain’t. Neither’s Pearson, nor Strauss. Completely human, they are—well, maybe not Strauss, we think he may have some’a the devil in ‘im.” Karen interrupts herself to bark a short laugh. “Oh, and a few others, but I forget. And Hosea ain’t any kinda wolf, that’s for sure.”“And good thing too,” Hosea says, interrupting the exchange between Sadie and Karen in the back of the wagon. He snaps the reins twice. From his seat beside Hosea, Arthur privately thinks that they’re going fast enough already, and maybe Hosea’s going senile in his old age. “If I were a mutt like the rest of this rowdy lot, well, I might just save the law the trouble and put myself out of my own misery!”“Watch it, old man,” says Arthur. “This mutt’s got teeth.”“Baby teeth, maybe.”Sadie looks between them like she doesn’t quite get the joke. She’s got one of the other girl’s shawls slung over her shoulders and her arms wrapped around herself like she’ll fall apart if she lets go. Even though they’re outta the mountains, a frostiness still clings to the frigid air, deceptively cold in the lush springtime greenness. Arthur wouldn’t mind one of them shawls himself.“So what are you then?” Sadie asks. “If you ain’t a wolf, I mean.”Hosea smiles at her. He’s good with people who need comforting, always has been. All kindness and none of that pity that riles Arthur up; he suspects Mrs. Adler ain’t a fan of pity either. She’s been pulling her weight since they picked her up, but a lingering sorrow still ghosts her. God knows she needs a little kindness after those damn O’Driscolls.“Why, I’m glad you asked, Mrs. Adler,” says Hosea, and Arthur knows that tone so well it takes a commendable amount of effort not to roll his eyes out of his skull, “because I’d love to tell. You see—“ a hand to his chest, like a showman on a big city stage— “Unlike my companions who, love them as I do, are flea-ridden dogs, I take pride in being a somewhat more upstanding creature.”“Oh, for God’s sake—he’s a deer.”“A stag, Arthur.”“Right, right, a stag.”Sadie glances between them, then to Karen, who only leans back and shrugs.Sadie’s brow furrows. “I thought that… I mean, from what I’ve heard about your sort—““Shifters,” interrupts Karen.“Yeah, that,” continues Sadie, “It’s just I heard that you tend to keep to yourselves. Predator and prey don’t mix an’ all that.”“Well, that’s normally the case.” Hosea passes the reins to Arthur then, who takes them dutifully, immediately slowing the wagon to a more appropriate pace than the breakneck one Hosea had they speeding at. Then Hosea slings an arm over the back of the driver’s seat, twisting to face Sadie. “But, Mrs. Adler, what about our little family here looks normal to you?”She blinks, then snorts, perhaps the closest to a laugh Arthur’s heard from her. “Fair point, Mr. Matthews.”“The wolf and the stag,” muses Arthur. “You an’ Dutch really are the strangest couple. Sounds like something from those books you love.”“Don’t forget our whole litter of troublesome pups.” Hosea’s smiling, laugh lines folding his face like creases in paper.Arthur smiles too. “Woof,” he says.