Brene’s fingers stilled, not quite brushing the pretty red apple. She scanned the edge of the woods across the meadow. Nothing moved in the shadows, but the back of her neck tingled as if someone had trailed a blade of frost across her skin. One heartbeat after another passed with no sign of what might have disturbed her peace. She glanced toward the cart, but the chestnut mare hitched to it nibbled the grass in front of her, undisturbed. The storm gray mimic nosing through the baskets for a choice apple was oblivious, thoroughly immersed in his hunt until he sent a basket tumbling and himself with it. Wings flapping wildly, he leapt to a steadier perch as the apples spilled from the cart, bouncing off the wheel as they fell.

“Zeyal!” Brene’s fourteen-year-old daughter chided the little creature as she stooped to pick up the fallen fruit. Inspecting them as she returned them to the basket, she frowned at him. “You’ve bruised them. Now they won’t keep but a few days.”

“Apple cider,” the mimic replied and licked his narrow snout in anticipation. “Tasty.”

“We already have more than enough apples for cider, silly beast. We’ll be tired of it long before we can drink it all.”

Zeyal gave a very human sounding humph, turned his back on the girl, and took off toward Brene. With a sigh and a shake of her head to dispel the strange dread, Brene combed her long dark hair over her left shoulder so the mimic could land on her right. Habitually, she tilted her head to the left, and he alighted delicately without clipping her head or face with his wings. For balance, he draped his tail down her back and around her ribs.

“Don’t mind her, Zeyal,” Brene assured him, closing her fingers around her apple. It popped from its stem with the barest tug, and she settled it into the bulging sack hanging against her hip. With a grimace, she arched her back and kneaded the aching muscles with her fists. With a sigh, she briefly smoothed her hand over her rounded belly before reaching for another apple. “Tyuri’s grumpy because she wasn’t allowed to remain in the village to watch Halvend and his brother thatch their new barn roof.”

“Mother!” the girl objected, but her cheeks reddened. “I am not!”

“No flirty flirt,” Zeyal replied, amused. Standing precariously on his rear legs on Brene’s shoulder with his tail now hooked awkwardly under her arm, he plucked an apple from the branch above their heads. With a happy purr, he gave it to Brene to add to her sack. “Apple harvest better. Food for winter now, time for flirty flirt later, when the snows fly.”

Tyuri muttered something about nosy mimics and moved away to continue filling her apple sack.

Brene laughed softly and reached to scratch under her  little companion’s jaw and then stroked her fingers down his back. His fur, which lay flat and smooth against his sleek body, was as soft as a rabbit’s, and his webbed wing, when she stretched it to tickle the nooks between the delicate finger bones, was warm and supple with the texture of fine suede. He rubbed his head affectionately against her cheek. With him riding on her shoulder, she moved on to another tree, her momentary dread relegated to the back of her mind if not forgotten.

It was a perfect fall day—crisp but warm and clear with sharp sunlight tinted faintly golden now that the equinox had passed. The apple trees still wore their summer green, but a few leaves had dropped after the hard frost the area had woken to yesterday morning. The aspen, cottonwoods, maples, and ash trees, however, were turning, and their leaves were a fiery rainbow of yellows and oranges with splashes of red mixed in. In contrast, the conifers blanketing the foothills and the mountains towering above were cool blue with the first dusting of snow.

Nearby, her four companions worked quietly—her daughter Tyuri, younger sister Anure, and their two mostly grown cousins. The younger of the two, Niven, had volunteered to help with the apple harvest to avoid their mother’s wrath. Rondival had come to search for a hearth gift for his new bride. The only sounds were the soft pops of apples being plucked from their branches and the rustle of the occasional breeze through the knee-high, summer-dried grasses blanketing the meadow.

There was no obvious reason for her unease, but it lingered like a wraith, drifting at the edges of her awareness.

“I think we’ve picked all the ready apples from this stand,” Anure said. She righted the basket Zeyal had overturned and emptied her sack into it. “Do you suppose we have enough daylight left to move on to that grove at the end of the meadow, or should we take what we have home?”

Brene eyed the sky. The sun was still plenty high enough to finish filling the cart if not to pick all the apples in the other grove, but she hesitated to give the word. Why? She’d neither seen nor heard anything to give any credence to her stubborn anxiety, and with the winds this time of year so fickle and unpredictable, it was best to harvest as many apples as they could before a storm knocked them to the ground and damaged them.

“We have time to go to the next grove,” she said at last. Lifting her sack carefully from her shoulder so she didn’t knock Zeyal from his perch, she walked to the cart, found an empty basket, and transferred her apples into it. Then she took the mare’s lead and started toward the far end of the meadow, out of sight around a bend in the valley.

Anure fell into step beside her while Tyuri and the boys followed along behind the cart. Boys? Niven was seventeen, had celebrated his lefkanda last summer, and Rondival was twenty-one and married now. She shook her head, amused at the passage of time and her own unwillingness to acknowledge it. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind if she thought of them as “the boys” a bit longer as she adjusted to the reality that she was meandering beyond the last years of her own youth.

After a while, her sister asked, “Are you all right? That babe’s not getting restless to greet the world, is he?”

The inquiry shouldn’t have taken Brene by surprise—not after three devastating miscarriages and the loss of an infant son to a fever in between—but she halted and glanced sharply at her sister, resting her free hand over her unborn child as old fears returned, swift and fierce. But no; she was not due for a month or more, and it had so far been an easy pregnancy with no signs the babe might come early.

“No more than they usually are by this point.” She paused, waiting to feel any reassuring movement, and gently prodded what she suspected was the baby’s foot. The child shifted and settled before stilling again, and Brene let out a breath. “Actually, she’s rather quiet right now. Sleeping, I think.”

“She. You are still so certain of that.” Anure regarded her with a brow lifted. “I wonder if you truly are or if you only wish it because Oyen hoped for another daughter.”

Hearing his name right then triggered a pang of regret. Brene set her jaw and started forward again with long her strides. She stepped high through the tall, golden grass as if she could outpace her grief. She winced when Zeyal’s claws bit into her shoulder as he clung on for the ride. She could not explain how she knew she carried a daughter, but she was as certain of it as she was that this pregnancy would be her last.

Her husband was dead, and she would not take another. Even if she could find the heart, she would not demean Oyen’s sacrifice.

The image of him, silhouetted against the blinding orange of their burning village, arms raised in supplication to distract the raiders so she and their two children might escape into the night, was branded into her mind. As was the glint of firelight on the ax that arced through the night and sank into his chest.

The scream she’d swallowed that night burned again in her throat.

“He was a farmer, not a warrior,” she uttered through clenched teeth. “But they cut him down with no more thought than if they were slashing through brush.”

And he had died not knowing that the child they’d conceived only a few weeks before would make it beyond the point of every pregnancy they’d lost. Would he have found relief in that or fear that the daughter they’d long hoped for would be born strong and healthy only to be taken by a fever as their second son had? It was a pointless question, of course, and doomed to remain forever unanswered.

She drew a shaky breath at that pain, familiar now though no less sharp. How long had it been—six months? seven?—since raiders of the Bloodpaw clan had descended on their sleeping village, slaughtering indiscriminately and burning what they could not carry off? Spring had still been little more than a dream, the world blanketed in the ragged but glittering snow of aging winter.

“Oh, Brene,” Anure murmured. “I spoke thoughtlessly. I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t. Grief is a wild and unpredictable thing,” Brene replied, “striking when I least expect.”

It was a miserable truth their clan knew too well. Three times in the past nine years they’d been forced to relocate, pushed deeper into the mountains where the summer growing seasons were shorter and the winters harder. This meadow with its rare apple groves had once taken a full day and a half to reach; now it was barely more than an hour’s walk from their settlement, and her quiet harvesting party of five was a shadow of the boisterous camp of two dozen or more she recalled from her childhood and adolescence.

Their people were peaceful. They weren’t warriors and had no desire to be. They were of the land—farming and hunting and gathering what they needed. They were content to build their homes and lives in the same place for generations and to celebrate life with song and dance and art. But perhaps that needed to change. The world was changing, and those who chose the warrior’s path were growing in number. How much farther could her people run until they were backed into a place too harsh to survive?

“If not the child… what made you hesitate back there?” Anure asked.

Brene glanced at her sister but didn’t immediately answer. The unexpected encounter with her grief had distracted her, but her sister’s inquiry snapped her focus back to the odd, lingering unease. It was stronger now. Sharper. Her gaze again tracked to the woods to their right as a wave of paralyzing fear slammed into her.

“Danger,” she breathed. She pressed her hands to the mare’s chest and shoulder as the animal too picked up on whatever subliminal cues Brene had. On her shoulder, Zeyal chittered nervously, his hackles raised and his crest flattened against his head and neck. She soothed the restive horse as best she could with her own senses heighted and alarm humming through her veins.

“Rondival, Niven, bows in hand,” she warned. “Be ready.”

“For what?” the elder brother asked but both jumped to comply.

“I don’t know.”

Heart pounding, Brene handed the mare’s lead to her sister and snatched up her ax from the cart, flexing her fingers around its handle, comforted by its weight and the contrast of smooth, hard wood and soft leather grip. It was no war ax, but it was well balanced and she could throw it with skill. She balanced on the balls of her feet, ready, peering into the shadows of the woods. What was out there?

“Brene,” Niven whispered, edging closer to her. “What did you—”

An inhuman scream cut off his question.

“Mistcat!” Brene hissed.

Chaos erupted.

The mare squealed and reared, stepping backward, but Anure held her lead firm, murmuring soothingly, and got the horse under control before she could hurt herself. Zeyal launched from Brene’s shoulder with an ear-piercing screech she’d heard only a few times before—his war cry. She reached to grab him but caught only air. He arrowed toward the woods, and she let out a cry of her own, terrified for her little friend as a dark red dragon burst out of the woods with not one but five mistcats clawing after her.

The closest lunged for the dragon’s haunches, but Zeyal dove at the cat’s face, raking his talons across its eyes. The feline snarled more in fury than pain and swiped at the mimic but missed. It momentarily dropped back, shaking its head. One of the other cats sank claws into the dragon’s muscular tail. The dragon stumbled but didn’t go down or turn to defend herself. Zeyal dove again at that mistcat. He missed. And the cat didn’t let go, dragging down on the dragon, powerful hind legs and claws tearing rents in the grass and earth. Another mistcat leapt and landed on the dragon’s back.

“Rondival, are they within range of your bow?” Brene asked.

“Only one way to find out,” he replied grimly. He knocked an arrow and drew back.

The thrum of his bowstring was followed by the thwump of his arrow striking flesh. The mistcat on the dragon’s back leapt awkwardly off with a furious yowl and crashed to the ground. Rondival’s arrow protruded from muscle just behind the cat’s shoulder blade. One of the other mistcats quickly took its place on the dragon’s back, claws digging through the sleek burgundy fur deep into hide and muscle.

The dragon screamed in pain and terror.

The sound reverberated in Brene’s bones.

In her soul.

Fear and sense fled, and she strode forward, adjusting her grip on her ax.