Wanting a Family Man (Raven’s Cove #3)

Chapter Sixteen

S torm woke early from her nap, while Cloe was showering. She was grumpy all evening, not eating well and uninterested in toys. She sat quietly with Cloe while Trystan showered, chewing a chilled teething toy and studying the picture book Cloe shared with her, but mostly she was unhappy.

Thankfully, there was no fever or other signs that she was ill. The teething gel calmed her, but she was overtired and missing Emma—which was more than apparent when Emma and Reid FaceTimed. Storm cried pitifully.

They ended the call when Emma started to cry. Cloe was on the verge of it herself. Storm was breaking her heart!

It was an unsettled night. Cloe had thought there might be a chance for some quality time with Trystan, but by the time he got Storm down for the night, they had to seize their chance to get some shut-eye themselves. He slept in the room that connected to Storm’s through a jack-and-jill bathroom and told Cloe to sleep in the rumpus room so she wouldn’t be disturbed.

The room beside Storm’s held a double bed. She could have slept with him in it, and told him she didn’t care if Storm woke her, but he insisted she use the pullout.

Even two floors down, she heard him get up several times in the night.

She scrambled eggs for all of them the next morning. Storm seemed to enjoy that, judging by the fact more went into her mouth than between her fingers or down her front. When the blueberries came out, she cheered right up.

“How do you feel about a longish hike today?” Trystan asked. “She usually falls asleep in the backpack. That would help her catch up on her rest.”

“Most people put their babies in the car to get them to sleep,” she joked, packing the bits of leftover egg into a container they could take with them.

“Most people have more options than driving up and down their driveway.” His tone was stiff, making her wonder if that was a joke or not.

She’d been having trouble reading his mood since yesterday afternoon. She had put his reticence down to Storm being fussy and needing his attention last night, but she was starting to think there was more to it.

He showed her their hiking trail on the map, which would take them up the graveled road to the airport tarmac. They would then climb to an inland pond, head down to a waterfall, and end on a beach on the far side of the island.

“That’s three hours out and three back. Can you handle that?”

“No problem.” Aside from last night, she had been sleeping and eating really well.

Storm started to kick and squeal once she saw the backpack.

It was a soggy day, but there was a rain fly to keep the worst of the damp off her and she had a cute knitted hat with pink mouse ears that tied under her chin.

Cloe wore Tiffany’s bright pink rain jacket and stuffed a dry toque—as Trystan called the knitted hats—into her own pack, along with dry socks and a pair of light gloves. Her inner California girl demanded she add a pair of Tiff’s drawstring running shorts because they didn’t weigh much and surely the sun would come out?

The first part of the hike was kind of boring, avoiding puddles in the graveled road then tramping across the cracked runway. On the far end, a small clearing of long grass and baby trees soon led into mature undergrowth and taller trees.

Despite the rain dripping off the canopy of evergreens, Cloe loved walking into the thick, dimly lit woods. Moss cushioned her steps and wet cedar perfumed the air. Ferns grew as though deliberately set down in aesthetically pleasing places: atop old stumps and from within the cracks in rocks and halfway up a living tree.

“Newt.” Trystan pointed to the lip of a hollow log. He always had the sharpest eye for the tiniest sign of life. “Tree frog,” he said a few minutes later.

A woodpecker gave a rat-a-tat and another bird gave a low whistle. Wings crossed above them in an audible swoop-swoop-swoop .

The next time Trystan turned to her, he thumbed at the backpack and lifted his brow in question. Cloe nodded and touched her lips to indicate Storm was fast asleep.

They carried on in silence.

This was one of the things she liked most about Trystan. She was capable of small talk because she’d worked in so many customer-facing jobs. She was naturally curious about people, but she wouldn’t call herself an extrovert. Ivan had been the type of person who couldn’t stand silence. He had always needed music playing and had often talked just to hear his own voice.

In fact, she tended to draw chatterboxes to her because she was willing to listen, but it was nice to simply walk in silence where the only noise was their footsteps and the orchestra of nature. It gave her time to think.

Which led her to considering her future. That wasn’t the most comfortable thing to contemplate, but it was no longer a terrifying basement she was too scared to peer into. It was more of a barren desert she would have to cross before she found whatever was on the other side.

What did she hope to find?

Her gaze hit the backpack where Storm was slumped forward against the pad between her and Trystan’s wide shoulders.

Something like that: a man capable of loving and caring for a baby. One who was confident and agile and might lead her into places that could be dangerous, but he wouldn’t leave her there.

Quit kidding yourself , she chided silently. She wanted him .

What on earth did she have that Trystan might want forever, though? Sex? They were great in bed, no argument there, but sex was not enough to sustain a relationship. She wasn’t enough, not when she was only a few steps up from Storm on the scale of self-sufficiency.

Plus, there was an awful, lingering erosion of her self-esteem from Ivan. Irrational doubts reared their head at times, chiding her that her boobs weren’t big enough, her hair was too curly, and she ought to keep her weight down because men liked women who were sex on a stick.

Trystan wasn’t like that. She knew he wasn’t, but a painful sense of inadequacy stalked her as they circled a bog where the remains of dead, broken trees stuck up like skeletons. She didn’t need to be more for him, but she needed to be whole.

The sky opened over the bog, still overcast and drizzling, but bright enough to make her squint. She stopped to watch the polka dots on the otherwise glassy surface, aware that Trystan also paused—he always noticed when she stopped. He was always patient while she absorbed a moment like this. He never rushed her and that was another thing she lov— liked about him.

Her breath backed up in her lungs. She didn’t love him. How could she? She barely knew him.

Her heart quavered in her chest, though. She could love him. Not fangirl love. Not the dependency on Ivan that she had told herself was love. The real kind. The kind that made her feel like she was enough exactly as she was, flaws and scuffs and shadows and all.

She followed him back into the forest, still silent and feeling raw. Places inside her were stretching and reaching, tentatively opening in welcome. She wasn’t doing it on purpose. Her last few inner guards were falling away because that’s what love really was—vulnerability. For better or for worse.

She wanted to let him in.

After a long, slow descent, she heard a creek.

Trystan had no trouble using the widely placed boulders as stepping stones to cross it. He paused to hold his hand back and steady her as she carefully picked her way on the slippery rocks.

Another gradual climb brought them to a narrow waterfall, but the litter of stripped logs told her it roared in spring. They circled a massive tree trunk of gray bark and Cloe paused to appreciate how tall it was. So tall, she couldn’t see the top through the network of branches.

She was breathing hard by the time they got to the top of the waterfall. They followed what had to be a deer trail along the edge of the hill, before they finally had another descent into a wide cove.

The rain had let up and the sky had finally brightened. Storm woke as they set out their picnic. She was practicing her walking skills so Cloe held her hands and let her tromp her Velcro-strapped sneakers across the packed sand at the tide line.

“Do people come ashore here?” she asked Trystan.

“In a Zodiac, maybe. It’s not the best place for it. There are a lot of hidden rocks. That’s why I like coming here. No one else ever does.”

“Someone brought their dog, though.” She was still bent over to hold Storm’s hands and nodded at the wet sand. The dog was off-leash because there were no shoe prints.

“Cloe.” He didn’t move from where he was crouched by his little stove, starting water to boil. “You know what that is. We saw one the other day.”

“A wolf ?” She snatched Storm into her arms, hugging her to her chest as she looked around the small cove and up into the trees. “It’s here , Trystan! The tide hasn’t come in yet to wash it away.” She hurried to the survival blanket as though it was home base and would somehow protect her. “This is an island. I thought the wolves and cougars were on the mainland. How did it get here?”

“Swam,” he said with a shrug.

“Between the islands? Are you messing with me?” She sat Storm firmly between her thighs and found a wet wipe to clean her own hands and Storm’s before she offered the baby a few cubes of cheese.

“No.” He was laughing at her, though, as he turned off the flame and set Storm’s bottle in the cup of boiled water. “They eat salmon and seal pups and whatever else they can find on the beach. If they can’t find anything on one beach, they go to another.”

“Well—Aren’t you nervous?” Cloe demanded.

“That there’s a wolf nearby? I’m not going to slather myself in bacon grease and whistle for him. If he’s here, he knows we’re here. Keep a stick nearby,” he suggested. “If he shows up, throw it for him to fetch. It’ll give you time to run away.”

“You’re not funny.” Laughter bubbled up in her throat, though.

“I don’t know what else to tell you. This is where animals live. We’re the visitors so we can’t be upset that they’re here.”

He wasn’t wrong, but she remained watchful as she accepted Storm’s warmed bottle and settled her into the crook of her leg to drink it.

They each ate a cup of soup and some trail mix, not talking.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but as Cloe sifted her fingers through Storm’s fine baby hair, she had the sense again that this was something she wanted. Someday. Children and a man beside her who acknowledged that life was dangerous but told her not to be scared of it.

For now, it was enough to have time with her sister’s baby and a lover who—

Her heart skipped a beat as she realized he was watching her with a somber expression on his face.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, biting back an instinctive Are we ?

“Glenda knows.” His mouth curled with dismay. He shifted his troubled gaze to the water.

“About us?” She touched her chest. “How?”

“She saw us yesterday.”

“Doing what? We weren’t even kissing.” She didn’t know why she felt so panicked, but a sensation of falling accosted her. “Will she tell Logan—”

“No,” he said firmly. “She won’t tell anyone.”

“Then…?” Cloe felt exposed, though. She had a PTSD flashback to that sick sense that she had done horrible, illegal things and was stupid for letting it happen. Complicit. She was bad because she’d made bad choices. She was to blame for the situation she’d found herself in. At least, that’s what Ivan’s defense attorneys had wanted everyone to believe, including her.

Storm rolled over, dropping her mostly empty bottle and scrabbling at Cloe so she could pull herself onto her feet.

Cloe absently helped her, then held her in a loose cage of her arms, supporting her as she stood on her wobbly legs, clinging onto Cloe’s T-shirt.

“You think we should stop.” She read it in Trystan’s starkly hewn profile.

“Not because Glenda knows. I don’t think what we’re doing is right, Cloe.” His gaze met hers and an arrow shot straight through her, leaving a trail of fire.

She was astonished by how much it hurt to hear that. To feel it. To be rejected by someone she had only just began to believe she could trust with her heart.

It’s not right. Because she was bad ?

She looked to the water, holding herself still as she tried to deal with how much pain she was in.

“I’m sorr—”

“Don’t,” she cut in sharply. “We agreed it was no strings. It’s fine. I’m not upset.” She was deeply upset. “I’m only sorry she found out. I hate people speculating on my intimate behavior. It’s gross.”

“She won’t say a word.”

It didn’t matter what Glenda said or didn’t say. Cloe would know Glenda was watching and wondering about them. That she would now be a witness to the fact that Trystan had dumped her. She liked Glenda. Somehow that made it worse.

“Cloe.”

She refused to look at him, concentrating instead on emptying the sand from Storm’s shoes, while continuing to hug her.

“We knew it was a bad idea.” She forced herself to meet his penetrating gaze and offered him a flat smile. “We knew it would be awkward afterward, but I don’t want it to be. It’s fine. We’re fine.”

Heavy raindrops began to fall. She seized the excuse to pack up without saying anything more.

She must have released a sigh as she shouldered her pack, though, because Trystan glanced at her.

“Tired?”

“I’m fine,” she lied again. She shouldn’t be tired. She was on her feet all day, but hiking was a different demand, one that her body wasn’t entirely primed for. Her heel was getting a blister and her shoulder and thigh muscles were aching from the first leg of the hike. She was kind of dreading how long the walk back would be, especially now that this gloom had settled between them, but all she said was “I’ll sleep well tonight.”

Trystan gave a jerky nod. “You’ll tell me if you need to rest.”

“Yup.” Absolutely fucking not. She would grit her teeth and pound out every single step to get back to the Storm Ridge as quickly as possible so she could sulk in private, thank you very much.

They left only their footprints on the beach and started the climb up to the trail.

Cloe should have been worried about the wolf. On another day, she would have been jumpy and turning her head at every little creak of a branch or plop of a raindrop.

Today, she trudged on in a misery of her own making. Why had she made any overtures toward him at all? They could still be friends if she hadn’t ruined it by begging him to make love to her.

She cringed at how needy she had been. No wonder he wanted to cut her off. She was like some kind of parasitic vine that was encroaching all over him and his life.

Ugh. And why was she letting her inner voice talk to her this way?

Her silent rage must have been keeping her warm because she didn’t realize how damp and cold it had become until Trystan stopped at the waterfall.

“Will you make sure her hands are covered?”

Storm was fast asleep. Her mouse hat covered her hair and the rain fly was keeping her dry, but Cloe gave her sleeves a light tug over her curled fists and made sure her track pants were pulled all the way down to her ankles.

“Good to go,” Cloe said, but Trystan didn’t go.

He turned and looked at her as though he wanted to say something.

All she could think was that he would make it worse, so she brushed past him and crossed the creek without any help, then started up the long zigzagging path on the other side.

Her thighs burned and her foot hurt, which was a nice distraction from how deeply her heart was aching. She pushed herself, aware of him coming up behind her. She didn’t want to slow him down and kind of wanted to outrun him. She wanted to outrun this whole awful situation.

Her boot skidded on her next clumsily placed step. The needles on the ground were wet and really slippery.

“Careful,” Trystan said behind her.

Shut up, Trystan . It was never helpful to tell someone to be careful after the fact. Didn’t he know that?

She clasped a sapling, which was covered in wet moss and slime. Ugh. Now her hand was caked with muck. The cold penetrated her palm and radiated into her arm. Why had she ever bought into Trystan’s false advertising that nature was so freaking wonderful, anyway? It was cold and hard and inhospitable.

Not unlike him , she thought uncharitably. And why was he so close behind her?

She reached for the next overhanging branch, which was dry and brittle, and took a high step, trying to stay well ahead of him.

That’s when her back boot slid out from under her, sending her into an ungainly splits. The branch she grasped snapped, she lost her balance, and slid down the bank.

*

“Cloe!”

Trystan’s heart came straight out his throat as he watched her tumble fifteen feet down the bank and fetch up against a fallen log.

On his back, Storm jerked awake and began to cry.

“It’s all right,” he lied, reaching back to pat his sister’s leg while he searched for a safe way to get down the slippery hill to Cloe. “Are you okay?” he called to her. “Stay still. Take stock.”

Cloe ignored that advice and sat up, looking dazed as she tried to get her bearings. “I’m fine.”

“Did you bump your head? Any injuries?”

“No, I just feel really stupid.” She looked with disgust at her filthy palms.

“Storm, shush,” he said, trying to keep his voice as steady as he could when his hair was on end and his pulse was pounding so loud it deafened him. “Don’t feel stupid. I’m glad you’re okay. Can you get back up here by yourself or…?” He looked for some footholds to get down to her.

“I can do it.” She started to stand, then cried, “Ow!” as she crumpled.

“What happened?”

She looked up at him with an expression of shocked helplessness. “My ankle.”

“All right, I’ll—” Shit. He looked for a place to leave Storm, but this was all wet, sloped gully. “You’ve got the rescue rope in your pack. There should be something with the emergency tent.” He started to unhook the baby carrier.

“No, I can climb up. I’ll just…” She began to crawl.

By the time she was close enough for him to lean his hand down to help, her jacket was coated in mud and needles. Her jeans were soaked and stained on the knees.

He clasped her forearm and dragged her up onto the path, then steadied her.

She clung to his sleeves as she found her balance on one foot. Now that she was close enough, he could see the gloss of distress in her eyes and the tension of pain around her mouth.

“Just your ankle?” He touched her chin so he could look at the scratch on her cheek.

For one second, he felt the heat that always seemed to happen when they touched. Sometimes it was a gentle kindling warmth, like sunshine. Other times a sharp flare of pure lightning.

Today, she jerked her chin away from his touch and brushed at the scratch. “Something smacked me.”

“Don’t get it dirty.” He caught her hand the way he would with Storm.

Cloe shook him off and glared at him with persecution.

He was only trying to keep this from getting worse. His brain was slipping into crisis mode, running a mile a second as he assessed the damage and planned how they would proceed.

At least Storm had quit crying. She was wiggling and fussy because she wasn’t finished with her nap, though.

“Okay, let’s get you—” Up or down? Both directions were narrow and slippery. The creek bed was closer and it provided fresh water.

How would he get her out of here? It was two hours back to the village when she walked at her normal pace, but she couldn’t seem to walk at all. It would be closer to get her back to the beach, but a longer walk back for him. Then he would have to get a boat around and into that cove.

“ Fuck .”

“I didn’t mean to fall,” she said defensively.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself.”

She wasn’t used to this. He had pushed her too hard and had upset her by having an entirely too clumsy talk with her. My stepmom knows we’re banging so we can’t do it anymore. How juvenile was that? He should have thought it through before trying to talk about it. He hadn’t known what to say, though. He just kept thinking that if they were hiding it, it must be wrong.

“Let’s get you down to the creek. You can take off your boot and we’ll see what we’re working with.”

Progress was slow. He kept his arm around her as she gave little hops, unable to put any weight on her ankle. The rain continued to steadily soak through the canopy, keeping the ground slippery and the air damp. He could feel her shivering in her wet clothes.

When she finally sat down on a boulder and removed her boot, her ankle was starting to swell and bruise.

Why hadn’t he brought a radio? He was such an arrogant fuck, always certain he could handle anything by himself. Alone.

Storm was still wiggling and cranky, further fraying their nerves as they faced facts.

“You’re not walking out of here.”

“Can’t you make me a crutch or a splint or something?”

“No.” Trystan pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think past the whines of his baby sister, but he already knew exactly what had to happen and it sucked.

The only thing to do was rip the bandage off so he just said it, point blank.

“If it was just you and me, we could take our time limping you out of here. We don’t have enough daylight for that. I’ll haul ass back to the marina, leave Storm with Logan, and get Search and Rescue in here to help me extract you.”

“You’re going to leave me here?” Her normally golden skin was already pallid with shock. Now it was olive gray.

“I’m not leaving you. I’m going to get help.”

Her eyes sheened with tears. Hurt, frightened, angry tears.

“Go then,” she choked out and fumbled to find her dry socks. “I’ll make my way at my own pace and…”

“Cloe,” he said firmly. “You’ll have to stay right here. Otherwise, I really will need Search and Rescue to find you. I’ll be gone four hours. Tops. I can move a lot faster without you and once she’s off my back, even faster.”

He unhooked the backpack long enough to empty a few more supplies for her, including the propane burner, the extra soup packets, his spare sweatshirt, and the emergency pup tent, which was made of the same shiny mylar as the survival blanket.

“I don’t need all that. I’m not spending the fucking night out here.” She winced as she tried to work her dry sock onto her injured foot.

Storm thought she was coming out of the backpack and was pissed right off when he strapped her back on. Her angry cries echoed through the whole gully.

“Four hours, Cloe.”

“You know what? Don’t even fucking bother. I’ve watched ten thousand hours of your show. I’ve learned all I need from you, especially the part where the only person you can count on is yourself. You do you. I’ll be fine.”

He knew this was as much about their talk on the beach as his leaving her when she was injured, but he felt all those words like the thrown stones they were meant to be. They fucking hurt.

“Four hours. Put that foot in the stream to keep the swelling down. Change into dry clothes and boil any water you plan to drink.”

“Would you just go ?”

*

Cloe held off her tears until he was out of sight. Until she couldn’t hear Storm crying anymore.

Then she let her own tears come. She cried and cried in the way she was so tired of crying. It was draining and wrenching and seemed to scrape her insides of every last piece of her soul.

When the sobs finally dried up, she was numb and empty and bleak. Slowly, her physical aches penetrated her consciousness. Her ankle throbbed and her body was tired from the long walk. The rock was cold and hard under her butt and her clothes were clammy and heavy with mud. Her eyes stung. Her throat was raspy and sore.

She wanted to hate Trystan and had a childish urge to die right here and now, just to spite him, but she kept thinking about Storm. Maybe Storm didn’t need her, not really, but no one else could tell her about Tiff. Not the way Cloe could. No one would love her exactly the same way that Cloe did, either.

She pulled herself together and knelt by the water to splash her face clean before drawing up the neckline of her shirt to dry her face. Then she took Trystan’s advice and soaked her foot.

The water was freezing, but it was bracing enough to snap her out of the last of her self-pity. She took stock of her surroundings, thinking, Be careful what you wish for . How many times had she imagined being tested this way, believing she would be perfectly equipped to deal with a situation like this because she had watched his show so compulsively?

It helped to make a plan, though. What would Trystan do? “Shelter, fire, food,” she said aloud. They were his ABCs of every trek. He was probably right about the wisdom in putting on dry clothes, too.

By the time her foot was numb, she had a list of tasks.

She dried her foot with her sleeve, popped a couple of ibuprofen from the first aid kit, then changed into dry clothes, including putting on Tiff’s shorts. That left her legs bare, but the worst of the rain had let up and Trystan’s sweatshirt hung almost to her knees so it wasn’t that bad.

After twenty minutes of relearning how to wrap an injury with the compression tape, she clumsily hopped her way downstream. Here, the creek flattened out to a patch of round rocks and pebbles where it seemed to flood every spring. The sky was more open, too. The trees weren’t overhanging as much so it would be a good place to build a fire without lighting up the entire forest. Rain was still dripping off the branches, so she doubted a spark would catch if one happened to fall on a leaf or branch anyway. There was even a log that was situated nicely for perching near the fire, where it would be warm.

She found a fallen branch to use as a staff and moved around the area, tossing dried sticks toward her fire pit. When she had what looked like enough for a good start, she made a circle with the biggest rocks within reach, then used the flint in the fire-starting kit on a handful of needles and bits of moss.

The fire caught right away, making her feel like an absolute boss .

She carefully fed the flames until there was a cheerful little fire. It felt so good! She staked out her soggy pants so they had a chance at drying, then set the metal cup full of water on a well-placed flat rock in the flames and waited for it to boil.

What else did Trystan do? He foraged. Hmm. She didn’t want to stray too far from tending her fire, but she found a huckleberry bush with a handful of late berries still clinging to it. There were probably some grubs or mushrooms around here, but she would wait until she was genuinely starving to death before she would consider those with any degree of seriousness.

Her water was boiling so she made a packet of soup and sat to drink it. That left her warm enough to remove her wet jacket. She set her wet socks to dry alongside the rest.

It was helpful to stay busy, she realized. She didn’t notice the isolation as much or stress about what would happen once she got herself out of this situation. She was trying not to hyperventilate over how much an X-ray was going to cost her. Probably all the wages she’d saved so far and then some. She didn’t have any insurance and now she couldn’t work at all.

Don’t think about it.

This was the beauty of trying to survive in nature, she realized. Survival was all you thought about. All those other cares fell away and forced you to be present to the immediate world around you.

Was that why Trystan liked it?

Did he feel this lonely when he was alone in the wilderness?

Wait. His show was called Never Alone . Duh.

She began looking for signs of life and suddenly realized she’d been listening to a squirrel chattering this whole time. The distinctive swoop-swoop-swoop of a bird’s wings sounded overhead, drawing her into looking up.

The fingerlike feathers of a raven’s outstretched wings tilted then contracted as it landed on a branch, high in a tree. Juvenile? It wasn’t very big and let out a harsh caw.

The aroma of her soup had probably drawn it, but it felt like company.

“Hi,” she said. “I’ve been abandoned in the wilderness and I’m thinking about eating worms. Got any recs on where to find the biggest, juiciest ones?”

Nothing.

As the minutes dragged out, a bizarre impulse had her asking, “Tiff?”

The black bird squawked and abruptly dropped to the ground beneath its tree, squawked again, pecked something from the undergrowth and leapt into fight.

Just like that, it was gone, but the idea took firm root in her mind that her sister was here, watching over her.

Cloe stopped being scared. Not of the woods and the isolation, or Trystan’s rejection, or even the sense of abandonment that had been clawing at her insides since forever.

For most of her life, she’d had this horrible sense that she was alone in this world. Her father was a mystery, and her mother hadn’t had the capacity to nurture or bolster her. Tiffany had been there, but not always. She’d had her selfish moments. She had chased her own dreams and wound up in a remote place, making a life with a man twice her age, seemingly forgetting about her kid sister.

Friends had come and gone, thanks to Ivan, and he had turned out to be a rat.

For months, Cloe had obsessed that she needed to have Storm in her life. She had to be important to her sister’s baby because the alternative was that she was inconsequential. Unnecessary.

That wasn’t true. She was here, alive and among the other creatures on the planet. Living life was all she had to do. Yes, she was uncomfortable right now. Her foot ached and her legs were roasting on one side, cold on the other. She wished she was somewhere dryer and warmer with a hamburger in her hand.

But if she hadn’t had these worries and discomforts, other ones would take their place. She would be stressing about where she would work and how she would make rent and was caffeine really that bad for you?

Life was never comfortable and perfect. Happily Ever After was a myth.

This was what life was. Existing. If you were lucky, you had someone to share it with.

She looked for the raven, but it was long gone. She was curious now what it had retrieved from under the tree, though. A pine cone? A nut?

She approached the place it had landed and spotted the biggest slug she had ever seen, crawling its way along a fallen branch beneath the drape of some ferns. The creature was the size and color of an overripe banana, kind of mesmerizing in its slow, slimy travel.

“You’re the biggest, juiciest worm I’ve ever seen. And dude, if Trystan were here, he would roast you like a hot dog.”

Should she try it? Just to prove she could feed herself if she had to?

As she pondered exactly how badly she wanted to impress no one at all, she realized the branch it was creeping along was a good length and thickness to make a crutch. It even had a Y shape on one end.

“Sorry, dude. I need your highway.” She used a smaller stick to knock the slug away, then kept the small stick to use as a crosspiece. She lifted the branch from the fallen needles and moss, then tested the arms of the Y. They seemed flexible enough to pull toward the main stalk without breaking, but how would she secure a crosspiece to support under her arm or brace her hand? Hmm.

Figuring it out would give her something to do, at least.

“Thanks, raven,” she said aloud and turned to hop back toward her fire.

That’s when a haunting sound floated through the trees, one that made her hair stand on end.

It was the howl of a wolf.