as did the younger, more trusting males, Thunder and Raven. Their howls filled the air as the sun set on their twenty-first day together.
That night, as Ena settled against Andret, she whimpered herself to sleep as he stroked her bristly gray fur. Stroking her gave him a sense of peace, a sense of calm that rivaled his memories of when he’d been young enough, and light enough, to sit in a human’s lap.
Of the faces of all the women who’d taken care of him, it was Calyce’s that he remembered the most, although she had not been the one who spent the most time with him. Like the wolves who’d come along and then decided to leave, he suspected the strength of the bond just hadn’t been strong enough. There were bonds forged of duty, and bonds forged of love. Calyce had loved him in a way the others had not.
Ena, Thunder, and Raven loved him.
That night, Ena went into labor. Thunder and Raven paced nervously but kept their distance. By dawn she’d delivered four wolf pups, three alive, and one stillborn. He’d tried to take the stillborn away from her, but she’d bit his hand, puncturing his skin and drawing blood before he let go.
He drew his hand back, horrified.
Your blood is poison to us. It was one of the first things a donai was taught.
But Ena wasn’t human, and the fact that her fangs had pierced his skin erased any doubt that she was engineered as well.
The punctures on his hand sealed within seconds. Within minutes, his nanites had erased any trace of injury.
With wary eyes, Ena licked the stillborn pup well into the next day as her live ones nursed. It wasn’t until she fell into a deep sleep that he took the stillborn pup from her.
He cradled the tiny female to his chest and padded away, just as Thunder and Raven returned with the carcass of a young doe. They always gave Andret first choice, but this time they dragged it past him as if he wasn’t even there.
Andret ran deep into the forest, far enough that when Ena woke, she wouldn’t be able to find her stillborn pup. He dug a small hole.
He’d never seen anything so still. Oh, he’d seen death. Accidents were not unknown in the creche. Humans were so fragile and didn’t have their own symbiotic nanites. But he’d never seen death like this—one not preceded by life.
What had gone wrong?
He shifted his vision, looking at the small body in a way no human could. The pup was small, far smaller than the others. He compared its anatomy with that of the adults. His untrained eye saw no anomalies.
There was something unspeakably wrong with not knowing the reason this one had died and the others had survived.
His chest hurt as he placed the pup into its grave and covered her up with dirt. He knelt there for a while, the hole made in his soul by the loss of Calyce widening just a bit.
Humanity no longer seemed like something to hold on to.
It hurt too much.
* * *
—
They could not travel until Ena was ready. She wouldn’t let Andret take her pups and carry them. Not after he’d taken the dead one. She growled and snapped and looked at him with distrust.
He should leave her to her pack. It was the logical thing to do. It was the right thing to do. He had forty donai lives to protect.
Every day he told himself that Thunder and Raven would take care of Ena. They hunted and fed her so she could feed her pups. But he couldn’t leave. He’d made it as far as an hour’s run and turned back. Along the way, he hunted and brought back anything he’d come across. But he’d always return.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me how long this is going to take?” he asked as he reached to pet one of the milk-drunk pups that had dozed off and slipped off her nipple.