Wolf Song (Wolf Singer Prophecies Book 1)

options sat well with me, especially since he was word mage. Words mattered to him more than most.
Nobody noticed me crouched by my dad. I hoped that the men would continue to speak freely, even though I was present.
"Yeah, but these were some other wolves, hadn’t seen them before. We was afraid they may not have known about the deal."
Gabriel glowered a moment. "I'll message the pack and let them know. Maybe these wolves were part of their pack. If not, well, part of the agreement was that they would keep the borders clear of other riffraff."
Eli just nodded. "It's all good since the wolves weren't doing much 'cept staring anyway." Then his eyes slid over to me, and I kept my head down, pretending I wasn’t hooked on every word they said.
Eli’s gaze settled on my dad. "Anyway, we was just out making sure the cattle was safe, then we seen the preacher here running like his life depended on it. Then he come to a full stop. Like out, face planted like he’d hit a wall.” He clapped his hands together for effect. “There ain't nothing that we coulda seen that had done that, so we grabbed him up on the hitch there, and had the horses pull him as we hightailed it out. There ain't no way we was going to hold the ground when the preacher hisself be running out them woods."
Gabriel looked at him closely. "So you mean to say, Eli, that you all left twenty head of cattle out to pasture without protection?"
Eli squirmed at the notion that he might’ve done something wrong. "Well, you did say those wolves should have protected the borders."
Gabriel looked like he would set the man on fire with his glare. "Did you even see anything out there? Except for the wolves?"
Eli blinked. He seemed to be kind of a slow man. "Well no, there warn't nothing out there after the preacher—"
As if he had realized that his well of information was tapped dry, the mayor stood up abruptly. "Craig, take Lucky out with you to the pastures and see if you can't redirect our cattle back."
The man named Craig nodded, and went out in search of Lucky.
The mayor addressed me. "Soli, you know I don't mean any disrespect or nothing. I just wanted to make sure anything that can be salvaged is."
I wasn’t as invisible as I thought. I nodded. "It’s all right, sir. I get it. Survival. That's my dad's number one rule." My voice wavered and I blinked, horrified that I might cry.
I turned my face toward Dad. Whatever else Gabriel might have said, he kept it to himself as he moved away from me. A commotion like this one would keep the mayor busy for hours, at least.
I scanned my dad’s features. Was he even in there? Was he alive? He had been recently, right? Eli had said he ran out of the woods. Ran. That indicated health of some kind.
A hint of almonds and whipped cream wafted toward me a moment before Zorah, the mayor's wife, sat on my father’s other side. Ms. Zorah used to be Dr. Zorah St. Clair Before, so she looked him over and I held my breath as she put her fingers both to his wrist and his neck.
"I found a pulse," she said, almost surprised. A wash of something poured through me and I let the tears fall. Other ladies of the church had been with Ms. Zorah, and they clutched my arms now in joined happiness.
I moved to brush my tears away and one of the ladies withdrew a glass stopper and captured a few teardrops. I looked at her curiously.
"Angel tears, darling. They will make for a great energizer in my spells." Then she scuttled off.
"Okay?" I wiped the rest of my face dry, composing myself before speaking. "Ms. Zorah, how come Dad's like that? How come his eyes don't close?"
To her credit, Ms. Zorah wasn’t the type of woman to be bothered by titles and the like. Whatever she was Before, she was fully a Mayor’s wife now, though she did get a lot of use out of her healing skills. But she did away with that “Dr. St. Clair” nonsense that she had once been. At any rate, she’d been Ms. Zorah or Ms. Mayor to me since I’d known her, to the point that I’d even forgotten she was a healer until she checked Dad’s pulse.
Her hand rested over Dad's eyes, the smooth black of her skin glowing like polished obsidian. She made me and my dad look pale. Her brow was smooth, unmarred by age as it sloped high above intelligent walnut eyes that scanned her patient clinically. I could almost picture her in a proper hospital room from Before. The more I took in her movements, the sillier I felt thinking that she could be anything but a doctor and healer.
It was with this stillness that she answered my question. "I'm not sure why your father’s like this, child. Maybe something he saw wasn't what he wanted to see?"
She didn’t try for ominous and yet chills ran over my body. I tried to ignore them. “You mean, there was something out there he was afraid of? Scared him into a coma?” I worried at my lip.
Ms. Zorah nodded pensively. “Perhaps.”
I didn’t like how she said that. Didn’t like how she hmm’d and clucked as she worried over him. I might not be fluent in medical speak, but I recognized concern when I heard it.
I needed to say something, anything, to drown out the one-sided conversation she was having with herself as she assessed my dad’s condition. "The men said that he’d been running and then just seemed to stop.” I nearly clapped my hands together like Eli had, but restrained myself. “Have you heard of that happening with...one of them?"
Ms. Zorah swiveled her head in my direction in an owlish motion. Her long elegant fingers still pressed against Dad’s pulse. "You