We have other tasks." He took me to another silver garland and had me tell him whom it belonged to.
After the third, I could find the strands myself without his guidance.
The fourth was Paul's.
He was running with Mary Jo--and just as anxious to find me.
He still didn't like Warren, though.
I could see that his garland and Mary Jo's were intertwined and connected to all the other garlands, too.
One by one we walked by the rocks that were the wolves in the pack.
Bran held me at Darryl's, when I would have hurried on because I wanted to find Adam.
"No," he said.
"I want you to look here for a bit.
Can you find Darryl's connection to Auriele? It's different from the pack bonds." I looked and looked.
I found Auriele's rock nearby, but I couldn't see anything.
Finally, in desperation, I picked up Darryl's rock and saw that it moved Auriele's, too--as if they were tied together .
.
.
and then I couldn't understand how I'd missed the blazing gold rope between them, it was so obvious.
Maybe I'd been looking too hard for a silver garland and instead their bond was very different--softer, stronger, and deeper.
Unlike the pack bond, it wasn't tied onto the rocks; it originated in one and ended in the other.
Bran took me by the elbow.
"Okay, quit playing with them.
You're making Darryl unhappy.
I have another one to show you." He led me to the center of all the strands of silver.
All but buried in the pack magic was a very, very black rock.
It radiated anger and fear and sorrow so strongly it was hard to go near it.
"Don't be frightened," Bran said, and there was a rough affection in his voice.
"Adam has been frightening quite enough people lately.
Look and tell me what you see." This was Adam? I ran up to the rock and put both hands on it.
"He's hurt," I said, then corrected myself.
"He's hurting." "Where is your mate bond?" It lay in the snow, a fragile and worn thing.
There were a lot of places where it had been roughly knotted, just to keep it together.