Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 5 days
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 5 days
There is something terribly wrong with the intercom link to reception, and Dahlia’s voice burbles and screeches from the speaker like a panicked fox. “Mr. Sor*#%sson? Umm, the*#% someone *#%? Says he’s %&# Gr*#t North LLC?”
“Did you say the Great North?”
“*#&”
Was that a yes? And what the hell is the Great North doing here? There’s no law about it, but there is definitely an understanding that our size makes any gathering of wolves Offland a cause for comment. We don’t want humans commenting about us. We don’t want them noticing us at all.
“Who is it?” I crane my head to see where Janine has gone.
“He won’t say. But”—her screeching-enhanced yell drops to a screeching-enhanced whisper—“I think you *#% get out here.”
“He.” I don’t know who it could be, but at least it’s not Evie or Tara, her Beta, the two wolves I least want to see right now. I pass Janine’s desk; her coat and purse are both gone.
Nestled between the offices that hug the plate-glass windows and the architectural glass of reception is a spacious and elaborate waiting area. Empty leather Knoll chairs are scattered here and there, each attended by concrete-topped side tables, fresh flowers, and glass bottles of water imported from places too cold for humans to have mucked up. They all attend upon the pleasure of clients who never come. Our clients pay too much to wait, so the whole thing is just a symbol of success. HST is so rich, it says, that we can afford to be profligate with space on the tiny, crowded island of Manhattan.
Several members of the staff, who all have better things to do, start tidying and adjusting: moving water bottles, plucking stray leaves, fluffing pillows and then chopping them so they are slightly dented in the top. Lauren, from Client Services, rearranges the hollow balls made of lacquered vines. As soon as she sees me, she holds my arm and nods toward the wall next to the elevator, as though I could miss the huge man who is leaning there reading because his body is too big to fit into the large, commodious furniture we provide for our large, commodious clients.
There is one other wolf that I really don’t want to see.
“Tiberius.”
“Elijah,” he says, pulling himself upright.
“Should we go into my office?”
“Probably for the best.” He looks impassively at the swarming humans busily doing nothing.
“Do you mind if I take this?” He holds the Atlantic up to Dahlia who bobbles her head like it’s not fastened on quite right.
The water movers and tchotchke arrangers and leaf pluckers and pillow fluffers stop what they’re doing and head toward their desks, all via the hall leading to mine.
“Did you have a nice trip?”
“It was fine. A little tie-up at the GWB, but other than that, no complaints. Nice setup you have here.”
“One makes do,” I say jovially as we enter my office.
As soon as the door closes, I turn to face him.
“So what the fuck are you doing here, Shifter?”
“I’m here on Great North business.”
“You should have used the phone. Now I’m going to have to make up some bullshit about football. I hate talking about football.”
“I would have used the phone,” he says, leaning forward, his eyes mute, “but seeing as you wouldn’t take your Alpha’s calls, I had no reason to think you would take mine.”
Neither of us backs down. I turn over the picture of Thea that I left on my desk. “Which brings me back to my first question. What are you doing here?”
“The Pack needs a new copy of the trust, because the one at the Homelands went up in flames.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. We need to rebuild. The Alpha also wants to familiarize herself with the changes you’ve made.”
The changes I made because it turns out that Tiberius’s father had found a loophole that would have allowed him to control all our assets by the simple expedient of turning the Pack of four hundred into a Pack of one. Well, two. His son and the crippled runt Tiberius would do anything to protect.
It’s hard to hide my resentments. My resentment over the destruction he has brought to our Pack. My resentment over the rebuilding that is taking place without me. When I am Alpha, it will be my turn to decide what to do about the Shifter.
Unlocking the safe, I pull out the thick, green letter box holding the voluminous pages of the Pack trust. I toss Thea’s file into its place.
I call for reception. “Dahlia? Did Janine go out for lunch?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“I need someone to do some—”
Tiberius pushes a button and hangs up on Dahlia. “We copy the trust.” I start to object. “Soon after you brought the trust to the Homelands for us to sign, my father knew every detail. I believe, and the Alpha agrees, that someone here—”
I cut him off before he can say any more. “Or maybe his son gave him access to the copy in John’s office?”
He looks down at the desk for a moment, then lifts his hand in front of him. Tiberius’s right hand is branded with the Ur rune. It was meant as both a punishment and a reminder to him of the importance of the wild. His left hand, though, the one he holds up to me, was not branded but impaled. The third and fourth finger overlap slightly, and there is a giant, ragged starburst in the middle of his palm.
“If I had done what my father wanted, he wouldn’t have found it necessary to nail me to a post with a dog spike.” He tightens his fingers into a fist and then stretches them again. I can tell by the way he moves that the hand will never be whole. “I’m not saying it was you, Alpha. But until I know otherwise, I don’t trust anyone.”
He picks up the letter box from the floor beside me, as if I can’t even be trusted to carry this thing that I’ve tended for more than two decades, my only fucking progeny. Then, with an elaborately courteous sweep of his arm, he indicates the door.
Wolves. I cluck with disgust and lead the way through the pale halls, past the associates’ offices and conference rooms, through the waiting area with its pointless water bottles. Opening the transparent glass door to reception.
“Dahlia? Could you have someone look into my intercom?”
Then I open the opaque green-glass door into the bullpen. Here, the whispered voices are crowded around, close at hand.
Sinise from accounting laughs with one of the clerks. “That’s not what Janine says. She says he’s hung like a fucking bear.”
“You mean ‘bull,’” the clerk corrects her.
“Whatever. I mean, a bear’s gotta be hung, right?”
“I don’t know anything about bear prick, but I do know that the expression is ‘hung like a bull.’”
Sinise snorts. “I’ll tell you what. When I’ve seen it for myself, I will give you a full report.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Look, it’s not even a thing. He’ll do anybody who’s clean and has a decent set of tits.”
Oh my god, that’s sad. I would say how pathetic to be that man, but, of course, I am that man. I know just how pathetic it is.
Tiberius’s senses are freakish in skin, so he hears—how could he not?—but he doesn’t react. Before he came to the Homelands, before he met Quicksilver, he was just like me. A man of the world. Of this world.
He asks loudly where the copy room is.
Sinise pops her head out of one of the cubicles, her face ashen. She pulls it back in and starts babbling noisily about billable hours.
“Almost there.”
There are two clerks in the room. I kick them out and close the door. There is no lock, so Tiberius unplugs one of the copiers and pushes it against the door. Dust snakes that had been hidden beneath are suddenly exposed and trundle across the floor. “Now,” he says, “which one do we use?”
“This is why we have staff,” I say irritably as I search around. There are several machines. Some are big; some are smaller. One is very big, as if maybe the bullpen uses it for all those stupid Calm Down and Lawyer Up posters.
I head toward one that is centrally located. Tiberius and I both stare at it blankly.
“Where do the originals go?” he asks.
“No idea,” I snap again. “That’s why we have staff. Maybe here, where the rectangles are?”
Tiberius pounds the edges of the sheaf of papers.
“And who among that staff had access to the trust?” Tiberius asks, piling the pages in a tray.
“No one. My assistant copies only the signature addendum when we are adding to the Pack. But she doesn’t handle the trust itself. And only John—well, now Evie—and I have the combination to my safe.”
Tiberius pushes the green button with a circle and a line in the middle. A light goes on, but nothing happens. “You’re sure she didn’t touch anything else?”
“Absolute…” But even as I say it, I can’t help but think of the times she flitted around my office either being professional or very, very unprofessional. I was always careful to put the trust away. I was always careful that the safe was closed and locked. Even when I was in the middle of that raging castor-induced hunger, I was always responsible.
Wasn’t I?
I look at the machine. When did things get so complicated, and what are all these buttons for?
Suddenly, Tiberius pushes something, and the machine starts its rapid-fire suck and cough. “Don’t touch anything,” he says.
“I wasn’t going to touch anything. Jesus.”
Tiberius stands silently, stooped over the shelf holding the Pack trust, drawing in deep breaths as the pages fly in and out of the machine. When it’s done, he picks up the original and riffles the pages.
“But someone else has had this,” he says, fanning the pages once more toward me. My senses in skin are strong compared to the humans, but they are nothing like my wild senses. And even my wild senses are nothing like the freakish array of Tiberius’s mixed Pack-Shifter heritage. Still, I would definitely be able to catch the unmistakable carrion-and-steel stench of humans.
“I don’t smell anyone.”
“You’re not scenting for someone; you’re scenting for something. It’s faint, but it is there. Try again.”
This time when he fans the pages against my nose, I catch the slightest whiff of something I can only describe as a mix of lavender breeze and the off-gassing of polypropylene carpets.
“What is that?”
“Industrial smoke remover, but Shifters sometimes use it to wash their hands when they’re trying to hide what they’re doing from other Shifters.”
“Oh please.” I slip the still-warm trust into its brand-new letter box. “Offland is full of fake smells. Don’t be so paranoid.”
I shove the box into one of the bags floating around the office from a charity run that HST sponsors.
“You should change the combination.”
Tiberius is starting to get on my nerves.
I thrust the bag toward him. STRIDE TO SURVIVE, it says in bold, white letters. The handles of the bright-pink bag are not long enough to fit over his huge shoulder.
“Oh, and Silver thought I should tell you that I will be challenging the Alpha for supremacy of the Great North this coming moon.”
“What?”
“I will,” he repeats slowly, “be challenging the Alpha for supremacy of the Great North this coming moon.”
“I heard you the first time. There is no way—no way—the Great North would…accept…a Shifter…as…”
I know what he’s doing. He has no interest in challenging for the Alpha spot. This is not about fighting Evie; this is about fighting me. According to our law, two wolves who challenge for the same position must fight each other first. Then only the winner is allowed to proceed.
With Evie weak, Tiberius is the one wolf, the only wolf, who might have a chance at stopping me from coming home.
“I hope there are no hard feelings?”
We are Pack. Fighting is how we settle status. It would be like a human holding a grudge because his cousin wore pricier shoes to Thanksgiving dinner.
“No, of course not.”
As he walks away, the pink satchel swings daintily from his forearm. Tiberius knows his wild now. He holds it burned into his skin and safe in his heart. And these women who smile at him with half-closed eyes and these men who scuttle out of his way are as meaningless to him as dried leaves to the wind.