I spun around. “Save me? Why don’t you shelve that hero-complex next to your stupid offer? I don’t need saving. Besides, I never asked you to save me. Wouldn’t want to waste our gajoï on something as silly as my wellbeing when I have such a great plan for it.”
Remo’s entire body seemed to expand as though he were flexing each one of his six hundred muscles.
I turned back around and walked. This time, I didn’t sing. One, because my teeth were too firmly wedged together to let out anything other than huffs and grunts. And two, what Remo said had gotten to me. However much I wanted signs of life—if only to reassure myself that this place didn’t kill fae off—I’d rather come upon them than they come upon me.
But mostly, I didn’t sing because of number one.
Right before I reached the arched mouth of the mountain, a low growl had me stuttering to a stop. Instinctively, I tried to push off the ground to fly, but my boots didn’t lift off the rails.
Crap crap crap. I squinted into the darkness, praying that whatever had made that sound wouldn’t launch itself at me like the shrieking pink flowers.
Another growl sounded, this time louder, as though its source had moved closer. Heart blasting, I backed up.
Another growl, and then another.
Aw, fae. Did all animals travel in freaking packs here?
I edged closer to the embankment right as enormous, four-legged animals materialized from the entrails of the tunnel. I released a breath when I realized they were lupa. Neverrian wolves were harmless. Well, as long as you didn’t pet them, because petting them opened a mind-link, and all they thought about was hunting small game and running. Something I’d learned first-hand.
A lupa pup had gotten dragged into the Pink Sea, and since fae wolves didn’t know how to paddle to save their lives, I’d jumped in and saved the floundering fur ball. For the next two years, every time the animal was near, I was privy to its inner musings. It had been strange, at first, receiving thoughts that weren’t mine, but then I’d gotten used to the strange little broadcasts and the day they stopped coming—my wolf had met an untimely death at the fangs of a tigri—I felt a twinge of loss.
I counted seven wolves. They were much larger than the ones back home but scrawnier, which confirmed the scarcity of food. Their ribcages poked against their white coats, which resembled their habitat—scant and filthy. Large patches of fur were missing on some; others were covered in so much grime, they looked like they belonged to another species.
One of them raised its head as though to sniff the air. As it leveled its face back on me, its tail came up, and then its fellow packmates’ tails straightened too, poking out from their skeletal bodies. I held my breath, expecting them to start wagging.
“Amara!” My name was like a bucket of ice water waking me from a doze. “Get away from them!” Remo was moving down the platform in slow but long strides, as though worried that going any faster would spook the wolves.
“Is the golwinim scared of a few little lupa?”
A chorus of low growls reverberated over the corroded tracks, over every rock in the mountain and every brick in the station. Good doggies. I assumed they were growling at Remo and his palpable hostility.
Still moving fast, Remo growled louder than the wolves, his frustration traveling down the trench.
I turned back toward the pack, intent on proving I wasn’t scared, that these creatures, although almost as tall as I was, were as sweet as creampuffs, but then a growl turned into a bark, which turned into a snarl.
I frowned. “Stop running, Remo.” I spoke gently so as not to freak the animals out any more than they already were. “You’re scaring them.”
“I stop running, and you’re a chew toy.”
“Don’t be ridi—”
The wolf, which stood slightly in front of the others—the Alpha, I surmised—let out a piercing howl before bounding forward. The others followed, their great paws pounding the trench. This wasn’t normal lupa behavior. The wolves back home weren’t aggressive. If anything they were skittish around fae.
“Amara! Get off the fucking tracks! Now!”
My body temperature dropped as fear flooded my veins. I backed up and then I spun and ran at the embankment, my legs not shuffling like they did back home. I launched myself at the steep wall, attempting to clamber up,