Lone wandering was a hard life, but it was the one to which Ephraim was best suited after a youth full of turmoil. Miles peeled away under his deft paws each and every month while he canvassed the coastline north and south of the wilds, but every so often—every three or four moons, by his estimation—he found his way back to check the cliffs and the grotto, just to be sure. He always found them empty and took comfort in knowing that Drageda had not risen again. The ghosts of that past were well behind him, but he had to know. He always returned, and always left in short order.
Not today, however. Today his paws carried him down the coast from the northern sea he frequented until the cliffs were in sight, and then he was smacked in the face with the scent of wolves. Not just any wolves, though. Wolves he recognized. Wolves he wished he didn't. Now his paws were stuck to the earth while he grappled with the knowledge—why here, why now?
hope you don't mind me?
Zola was not one to run from her fears.
The time spent in the human crate was enough to rattle her, yes. It was enough for her to recall being washed ashore on the coast, wood broken up and herself free from relative harm. The storm had hit the vessel she had been on, throwing her overboard.
It still burned in her mind. It was something she had to face. Not the wolves that lived on the coast, she lived at Easthollow further inland. Yet she could recognize the face of another that perhaps did not want to encounter what he thought he would. She faced the man from the back, pausing in step.
She did not approach him, keeping her distance. Zola lifts her head and chuffs to him, alerting the other of her presence.
Ephraim hadn't got as far as he had alone by not taking heed of his surroundings.
Before Zola even made a sound, the coywolf turned, panning his ears to the sides and fixing her with a narrow look. Nothing about her struck him as familiar, but his breath still caught in his throat when he first saw her. He remembered the wolf whose fur was purely russet red, whose scent curled strong in the wind, whose time imprisoned in Drageda had marked the beginning of his own end there. His heart clenched, then released; this was not Rosalyn.
You from this group?
he asked, more brusquely than intended. Ephraim always experienced nerves when he came back to this place, even when confirmed that it was empty. Sometimes he thought he might find Heda's ghost here, or Caiaphas' in the grotto down below. He never did. Somehow, knowing that the wolves who stormed Drageda were now living here was worse, and if Zola was one of them, it was in his best interest to make himself scarce.
And yet, and yet, the familiar scent of one called to him.