Epilogue

The Pack is home.

We’ve had over a week of rain. How much over a week, I don’t remember, but enough to force prey to higher ground. Enough to make the earth churn under paws and feet into a slippery veneer of mud. Pack tempers are running high. Dominant wolves are constantly fighting dissent. Except for the ones who are fomenting it.

Now a wolf has killed a young, healthy moose, ripped out the best parts, and left the rest for rot and coyotes. I nose the earth around her remains, trying to distinguish the scent of the responsible cur from the random scavengers.

Something is riling the Pack again. Ælfrida founded a pack with just fifty wolves. In the 350 years since, we have added to our territory whenever possible, but there simply isn’t space for four hundred wolves with too much time on their hands.

Nosing the carcass aside, I try to get underneath where hopefully the rain hasn’t washed away the smell of this breaker of laws, this waster of life. Let the dominant wolves closer to the Great Hall deal with the ruckus down below.

Then finally, I get it. A tiny remnant of wolf scent. This is no small crime, and someone is going to pay for it.

Now the call has been taken up by the 9th. The other echelons fall silent as Sarah and Francesca and Adam and Lorin and Dani call for me. I howl back. Enough already, I’m coming. I’m coming.

Through an elaborate triangulation, my echelon guides me past mixed woods and spruce swamp and Home Pond and sugarhouse. In the distance, Melanie from the 13th is talking about taxes.

They called me from halfway up the mountain for this?

“No, actually, I’m a tax attorney. We have CPAs who…who do the actual taxes.”

I can’t see who she’s talking to. About taxes. She scratches the back of her mud-covered calf with the big toe of the other foot. “Do you…do you have an accountant?” she asks conversationally.

“No, I use the 1040EZ.”

I skitter to a stop. It’s been six weeks since I heard that voice. Six weeks since I sent her away with a promise to think about what it meant to tie her future to me. To us. To be under attack from a hostile world outside and a prejudiced Pack at home.

To give up any dream that she might have children of her own.

Because this thing of ours… It’s not like a marriage. You don’t give it a whirl. Try it on for size. It’s a fight to the death. That’s what I told her. You just keep fighting, and then you die.

I start to run.

“That’s good,” Melanie is saying. “Though it’d be better if they upped the interest income rate, right?” She raises her nose and sniffs at the air. “He’s coming. Well, it was nice to meet you, Thea.” She pats her naked hips. “I’d give you my card, but…”

I break through the trees onto the path leading to the gate.

“Another day,” Thea says. “When you have pockets.”

Melanie twists quickly and jogs toward me. “The Alpha does not believe it is safe for her here…”

I didn’t stop to listen, so I don’t know what else she had to say.

“Elijah?”

It’s not the Iron Moon, so the tall main gate isn’t locked, just the low fence that keeps cars from driving up. Sliding through the mud, I race toward the granite boulder that really should be excavated but right now forms a ridge above the eroded dirt—and if you’re strong and agile, you can get enough lift from it to clear the gates.

I land stumbling but upright in front of her, my nose to her shoulder and breathing her in. Why have you come? And how can you smell so good? Should I be afraid? I know I wanted you to take some time and really think. But six weeks…

Should I be afraid?

“I wanted to show you something,” she says and walks away from the Homelands, downhill and across the access road. Then she starts a steep climb back up, holding on to trees as she drags herself up to the top of the ridge. We walk to the edge of our territory and then to the wolf markings that so clearly delineate the end of the Homelands and the fence and NO TRESPASSING signs aimed at dissuading humans.

With one step, I am Offland again, for the first time in over six weeks.

We head a little farther and then parallel the border with our land. Straight ahead is the fire watchtower. I’ve never seen it from up here. Didn’t know there was a cabin, though I suppose I could have guessed there’d be one.

The porch has been recently patched up. A handful of pale boards among the gray. Thea wipes her feet on a sisal mat before the door. I do too. First front paws, then back. The door isn’t locked.

The door opens, and my soul aches as I sniff at each familiar object. The black-and-white chaise, the little table. The narrow shelf with a single cup, a single bowl, a single plate. The books that smell like the Plattsburgh Public Library.

“I offered to switch with the ECO for northern Franklin County,” she says, hanging up her anorak. “He leapt at it. Too much nothing up here, he said. Told me I’d never find a man. I said that was fine with me. He said I’d never find a woman either.”

She turns around, pulling slightly on her collar. She is wearing her braid.

“I left it at that.”

Sitting on the foot of her chaise, she unties her boots, sliding one beside the cast-iron stove. I sniff at the various rust spots, then scrape dismissively with my hind leg.

“Yeah, I’m getting a replacement.” She puts the second boot beside the first, then she looks at me. “So…do you maybe want to get changed?”

I nose the door that has a latch tucked into the handle, a space too narrow for anything except a goddamn thumb. That will have to be replaced. Looking along the length of my flanks, I ask Thea for help.

“I’m going to take a shower. Just do it here.”

That was not really the answer I wanted. I wait until the bathroom door closes and then throw myself on the floor where the back of the chaise nearly touches the wooden table and stretch out my forepaws. Of course she can’t luxuriate in the shower, and of course I am at that half-man, half-wolf, naked, freakish, gargoyle state when I feel her hand on my skin. I can’t see, I can’t hear, I can’t smell, I can’t move. But I can feel.

What I feel is a warm, slightly damp hand stroking my changing skin. What I feel is a woman who knows what she is, who knows what I am.

And who loves me anyway.

When my eyes finally are able to focus, they find Thea sitting on the cold floor, her cheek propped on her bended knees. She rubs something between her fingers.

“You’re shedding,” she says.

“It’s… It gets worse in the spring.” I cringe as my palm collects a loose coat of sable fur. “Molting.”

“Makes sense. Do you want to take a shower? I put in a drain strainer.”

With that, I know everything I need to. It’s not the romantic declaration of a flightier woman. In her quiet, practical, knowing way, my fierce female has considered what it means to tie herself to me and said yes.

When I am done, Thea slides to the side of her bed, lifts the blankets.

And in the arms of Thea Villalobos, Goddess of the City of Wolves, I am home.