Chapter 68: Apparently Even Her Hair Needed a Fake Name

Dove shoved her blanket into the pack as water spread across the lower channel. Thorne crouched between her and the main entrance while Edrik kept his body behind the stone lip. Nobody answered the men outside.

The oldest caretaker pointed at the inspection opening. It was narrow, with a rusted grate held by a latch on their side. Beyond it, steps led up into a stand of fir trees. They had to leave the courier sled under the high shelf; trying to pull it through would trap everyone.

"Take the food and bandages," Dove whispered. "We can hate the rest of this later."

The wolf and stag, still human-shaped after tending the cut, divided the packs. The caretakers took their prisoner between them. Thorne stayed beside Dove until the latch opened, then helped her through without putting her feet in the rising water.

A shout came from the front. One of the men had spotted movement, but the bend in the stone blocked his view of the inspection steps. Edrik held the grate while the last caretaker climbed out, then shut it behind himself. His palm pressed against its frame as somebody tried the other side.

Edrik told Thorne to take her ahead and promised to follow, reaching the trees with them before the men found the rear path. Thorne changed under cover, leaving his clothes in their bag, and lowered his panther body for Dove. She settled against his neck while Edrik shifted and followed their tracks. The couriers shifted too, carrying supplies in their harnesses, and the caretakers kept the prisoner moving between them.

Nobody spoke until the culvert disappeared behind a low ridge. The oldest caretaker checked that no one followed, then led them toward the shopping strip on the map. Smoke rose from a distant roadblock farther north. Dove could just make out men beside a striped barrier, stopping a cart.

"We’re not using that road," she said. Her voice was steadier this morning, even if she still jumped whenever snow dropped from a branch.

The caretaker agreed. A service lane behind the shops joined an old delivery road west. It added miles before Pine Ridge and more before Terminal, but it kept them away from men who wanted to turn a woman into a payday.

Dove told Thorne she had decided to hate shortcuts, since they seemed determined to get her killed. His ear brushed her glove. She rubbed it because he had kept turning it toward her, checking every word, every breath. She was grateful and tired and not ready to discuss which feeling was biggest.

They stopped behind a row of low storefronts. One had sold mattresses, another phone cases, and the third had a faded BEAUTY SUPPLY sign above a boarded front window. Its delivery door stood open onto a dry storeroom.

Dove lifted her head. "Wait a minute. Let me see if they have hair dye."

Thorne looked back at her. She tugged a white strand from her coat. "Every asshole on the road has a description of this. Maybe blonde would suit me? Or brown. Brown sounds wonderfully forgettable right now."

Edrik shifted behind a delivery van and dressed before checking the service lane while Thorne inspected the shop. Once they knew it was empty, Thorne lowered her onto the clean floor before changing and dressing behind a stock shelf. He stayed close as she searched the aisles.

Most of the register drawers were open, but nobody had bothered taking every shampoo bottle. Dove found a sealed box of dark blonde dye, a knit cap on a clearance rack, and a comb with all its teeth. She touched and stored each item separately, finishing the travel storage task without yesterday’s awful drain.

"That’s much better," Sprout said. "Physical contact uses far less energy. Your emergency retrieval is not a replacement for practice."

"Funny, because almost passing out didn’t make me eager to do it again."

Thorne heard her mutter and asked whether it hurt. She shook her head and brought the dye back out. "It’s telling me to behave. I’m sure you can imagine how well that’s going."

He smiled, but his fingers paused on a pale strand beside her cheek. She turned the box over, looking at the little photograph of a woman with hair nothing like hers.

"You won’t miss it?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "The white hair, I mean. It does make me easy to find when you lose me behind furniture."

Thorne cupped her cheek. "As long as it’s you, you’ll always be beautiful to me."

The answer caught her before she had a joke ready. She leaned into his palm, closing her eyes for a moment because it was warm and he was here. After last night, being touched without having to brace for anything felt almost unfairly good.

"That’s a very dangerous thing to say to someone deciding whether to give herself bangs," she murmured. Her cheeks warmed when he laughed.

"Ahem," Edrik said from the doorway. "I’m still here, and somebody needs to watch the alley."

Dove opened her eyes. "You could look at the alley instead of us. Just a thought."

Edrik said he had been watching both, which earned a low laugh from Thorne. "Careful, Dove, he’ll start asking for praise next." She laughed without having to force it, and both men watched her as if the sound mattered.

She tucked the dye away. Changing color needed water, time, and a safe place to check the box’s directions; they had none to spare. For now, she tucked her hair beneath the cap and wrapped her white tail under her long coat. It would not hide her scent, but it might stop somebody recognizing her from across a road.

At the loading door, the youngest caretaker brought her a paper torn from the boarded window out front. Her stomach sank at the sketch of fox ears above a reward notice. It repeated Garran’s old order, adding cash and fuel for a return through the northern crossings. Someone had posted it here recently enough that the corner was still damp with paste.

"We keep going west," Dove said, folding it with hands she refused to hide. "I’m still getting to Terminal. They can make me take longer, but they don’t get to choose where I live."

Thorne took the paper while Edrik studied the fresh paste. From the alley came the scrape of wheels and a man’s voice asking who had opened the beauty shop’s back door.