Walk The Line

Chapter 1: Damn

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Song featured above it, "Folsom Prison Blues."

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"Shit."

"Dammit, Lander."

If my younger brother was anything he was a pain in my ass. I loved my brother. I did. It's true, most days. He's twenty younger than me, still a pup even at eighteen. I guess he's always going to be my kid brother though.

Lander quickly wipes up the coffee he spilled. It's making a lake across the table top I helped him build last week. The dark water eventually reaches a few papers until it runs off the black ink from the new type-writer my father purchased for me. I hate the damn thing but it's more efficient than writing at times, although now the black ink is just making a mess.

"Shit—" He's making more of a mess trying to wipe it up.

Claire turns the corner and groans. "Lander!" she hisses.

"What? Love, don't worry, it's just coffee."

Claire eyes the table, her hands wiping on the apron tied around her waist, over the blue dress my mother had helped her sew. It's always odd to see her in a dress. Claire always stole Lander's pants then tucked one of her frilly shirts into it; even when we were kids, she would still steal his pants and tuck her shirts lined with delicate lace and flowers hand stitched into them. Lander used to ask why she wore pants, and she would just reply, "Well why the hell do you wear them?"

He stopped asking, not like he cared. Lander's been in love with Claire since he laid eyes on her when they were just babies. Lucky bastard. Mother was afraid that if they weren't mates that it would break their hearts, I didn't think the Moon would be so cruel, and to his luck, she wasn't—to him at least.

"You're lucky it's almost the same as the wood," she replies, heading towards the kitchen that I helped Lander build. He didn't want to mark Claire until he had a proper home for her.

Lander shrugs and smiles at her, one that always made her blush. I used to tease her about it when she was younger, I still do now.

She walks to the wood burning stove, that I swear was half dragon for as much heat as it put out, and checks the roast she has cooking in one of the drawers my uncle Laurent custom welded for them. "So, how was the line today?" she asks, poking a big wooden spoon at the roast, testing it.

"Same as yesterday," Lander sighs tiredly. "Bowie found more."

I raise my brows. "More?"

Along the line we don't cross, the line that separates our pack from Mangata, we've found evidence of poaching—butchering. At first, we were missing deer. Too many deer. Bowie's mother Nalia, our head Tracker, knows more about the game in this region than anyone else and started to notice that too many were being picked off. The problem is, we knew which hunters were bringing in what bounty, and with the numbers they reported, we shouldn't be missing so many.

The problem wasn't just that we were missing the deer, which is a problem since we rely on the numbers to be stable so we can plan for our own pack's survival. The problem is how we found them.

The first time I ran into them I was with David. His father, Dagger, is our Master of Arms. David and I were running a normal patrol route when we found it, intestines scattered on the ground. Innards of animals were like breadcrumbs someone forgot to pick up, leading us the bodies of two does—both without heads. The fatty parts had been taken from them, stomachs gone from them, along with their hooves. I've never seen anything like it.