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snapped her neck.
    Harvest lay back on the rough ground. Invisible thorns pushed their way into the ends of every nerve in her body. She took deep breaths and saw pinpricks of light. Beyond them, a few bright stars sprinkled across the heavens like the rocks under her spine, stars she had wished on since she was old enough to know what wishing was for. “Go then,” she said to those stars. “For he has now forsaken me.”
    A wolf approached her, but it was the charcoal gray. The elder brushed her neck with his muzzle, then leapt over her seizing body to follow the tails of the pack that had already left him behind.
    Harvest broke her nails in the dirt and concentrated on the wind and the air and the babe tearing its way out of her. Courage, little one , she told it. It’s just you and me, now . Wind and air and pain. Breathe. Wind and air and pain. Breathe. Wind and air... and a hand on her forehead. She opened her eyes to see Bane standing over her, scrawny and shaggy and smelly. His blessedly furless skin was riddled with angry scratches and bruises as deep and purple as the skin beneath each of his blue-green eyes, and it was the most beautiful sight Harvest had ever seen.
    The remnants of his wolf magic fled from his palm into her body, Harvest could taste and feel and smell and live it as it waned, healing her heart and filling her womb before it died completely. As her burdens lifted, the babe escaped her body in a rush of fluids. Bane wrapped his son in the blanket he had left behind and the three of them lay quietly together under the stars.

    I n addition to a certain amount of strength, stamina, and the ability to see in the dark, Bane lost his voice. He still spoke a little, but his words growled out from low in the back of his throat. There would be no more singing for him. He could still play, though, and when the rest of his memories came back to him, he accompanied his mother to the top of the hill in the evenings to sing down the sun. Harvest made the journey as well, carrying baby Hunter until he was old enough to walk. She sang as well, and though her voice never carried the force of Aurelia’s, it grew from that of a chickadee into a lark.
    It was spring before any of the wolves dared show their faces. When one did, it was that of the charcoal gray elder. He came to them at the full moon, and it seemed that his coat was sprinkled with far more white than Harvest had noticed previously. She was glad he had returned, so she could properly thank him for fetching her and protecting her. Bane was less happy about the wolf’s presence.
    “Why are you here?” he snapped. For all that he was pure human now, he acted more like a wolf than before.
    “I have come to ask your forgiveness,” said the elder. “Our female trapped you, and in doing so, she put you in danger.” He looked down at the babe Harvest cradled in her arms. “She put all three of you in danger.”
    “I want nothing from you,” Bane growled.
    “The gift is already given,” said the elder. “Whether or not you use it is up to you.”
    “What is it?” asked Harvest.
    “The gift is the song,” said the wolf. “We took much from you that made you valuable, and for that we must give something in return. Balance must be maintained.” He motioned down to the fiddle that hung at Bane’s side. “Play the song you know,” said the elder, “the song with which you farewell the day. The song with which you called the wolves. If you play the song as you walk through the Wood, no harm will come to you.”
    “There is no song,” said Bane. “I can no longer sing.”
    “The magic is in the melody,” the wolf said to him. And then to Harvest, “The words are yours alone.” He placed a palm on Bane’s chest. It startled him out of his scowl, but he did not flinch away. “You may not have yellow eyes, cousin, but you still have a golden heart. Perhaps one day you will find forgiveness there.” He let his hand fall. “Not today.