Evie
“Beta,” I say to Tara, who follows somewhere in the silent dark. “Send Lorcan, Eudemos, and…and Elijah to my office.”
At the Great Hall, pups play in the corner where Tiberius lies changing behind one of the Adirondack chairs. Usually Tiberius would have found an isolated spot, but I have smelled his temper and know how hard this Iron Moon spent in skin has been for him. I avert my eyes, a kindness we give each other during the change when we are neither in skin nor wild, when our faces contort and drool, when our hips narrow and shoulders thicken and fur sprouts out in strange places.
John runs to me, his forepaws on my calves. I pick him up and mark him. Like all pups, he takes the belonging he needs before struggling away, back to clamber over his sire’s writhing body.
John.
Wolves don’t have time for regret, but sometimes anger bubbles up and I feel myself growing angry at Ronan, the wolf who brought the Pack to August Leveraux’s attention. Angry at John for letting Tiberius come. Angry at Tiberius for staying. Angry at myself for being weak after my lying-in. Unable to move quickly enough to get away when August’s men came. Angry with John, my mate, our Alpha, who distracted them and got himself killed, leaving me to deal with everything that came after.
The screen door slaps closed behind me. There were two things John dreamed of fixing. One was the junkyard, that five acres of land that sits like a carbuncle in the middle of our territory. The owner had refused every offer of payment out of spite, and then out of spite, he sold it to August, who promised we would never have it.
The other thing John wanted to fix was the Great Hall itself. “It’s not so much a Great Hall,” John had said, “as a Fair-to-Middling Hall that will never change because wolves like the way it smells.”
Would he approve of it now? Now that the ash smell of the hall the Shifters burned is gone. Now that the whole Pack could gather together. Now that it is tall enough for adult wolves to stand without cracking their heads on dormers. Now that it is big enough for them to move about without knocking over lamps in cramped rooms.
“Alpha.” Joelle, Gamma of the 10th, stands at the entrance to the Alpha’s office—my office—shaking out a sheaf of multicolored papers.
The requirements of the Iron Moon—disciplining an echelon, helping with a hunt, teaching a juvenile—are so radiantly clear and necessary.
In skin, the requirements of an Alpha are tedious and in triplicate.
“Do it again without the two-by-fours.” I pass the purchase order back and run through the work schedule in my mind. “Send the 4th and 8th and 13th to take what the Shifters left on the lands north. Whatever we can use. There is good wood there.”
Trevor approaches to ask about next year’s education plan, and I search through a canvas bag for the sheaf of papers bristling with multicolored stickies. I’d almost finished, but then came the time when I lost the fingers and thumbs I would need to hold a highlighter.
When Lorcan, Eudemos, and Elijah come, they join Trevor next to the open window, tasting the news on the air, while I finish my paperwork.
What happened to the Transcendentalism class? John taught Thoreau and Emerson and Whitman. I will not have that gone. I finish writing in the margins of the teaching plan and hand it back to Trevor. Tara’s claws click on the front stairs.
Elijah cranes his head to look through the door. “They’re coming.”
Heavy footsteps oblivious to everything thud up the stairs, and the front door opens.
“Take off your shoes!” shouts one of the juveniles who had been sweeping the floor.
Tara stops in front of my office and bends her head toward the mudroom.
We wait, my foot tapping impatiently on the floor.
How long does it take to take off shoes?
“Did anyone check the Spruce Flats?”
“Poul did,” Lorcan says. “The bodies are still there. The coyotes aren’t eating them. The deer who fled the land to the north have made the coyotes picky.”
“And the dog?”
“Not the dog either.” Lorcan’s chin droops down to his chest. He had called Victor Deemer, as we all had. And when Victor had used the excuse of Elijah’s human mate to divide the Pack, Lorcan had followed him, as had so many of the younger echelons. Then he discovered that Victor intended to replace me and hand over the Great North to August. Now Lorcan cannot look me in the eye.
The smell of steel and carrion wafts down the hall followed by the loud tread of the Shifters who stink of it.
“Lorcan,” I say to the bright-pink line of his scalp at the part of his hair. “Wolves do not have the luxury of regret. Cum, agna in rihtum.”
Come, claim your right.
And Lorcan, broad and powerful, bolts for me like a pup, his eyes wide with the fear of loss and the need for belonging that only the Alpha, the symbol of Pack unity, can give. Slowly, slowly, I pull the strands of hair away from his face so nothing will come between his skin and mine. I rub one cheek against his, then repeat it on the other side.
The Shifters stand watching at the door, but I will not hurry Lorcan as he takes my scent. He has spent the whole moon angry that he allowed Victor to mislead him, fearful of losing his connection to the Pack. I give him the time he needs to breathe in that belonging again, and when he is done, his head is higher. As soon as I am done with the Shifters, I will mark again all the wolves of the echelons misled by the traitorous dog.
I have decided to divide the Shifters among the Alphas I trust the most, so Julia will go to Lorcan; Elijah will have to handle Cassius, who after all his loud complaining stands oddly silent, glaring into the distance. Julia, who had said almost nothing, now pleads incoherently, holding out her red and ridiculous shoes to Cassius’s retreating back as though they are explanation of something. Lorcan takes her wrist and pulls her toward the door, still endlessly babbling sorry, sorry, sorry.
“I’m sorry. I don’t belong here. I’m sorry, Cass. I don’t know why. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be in New York. I’m so sorry.”
As her “sorries” retreat down the hall, I look at the two remaining Shifters. Eudemos, Alpha of the 14th, will take Magnus while I—
In the distance, the gray wolf calls.
As soon as her voice has had time to reach all the way from Westdæl to Endeberg, whatever wolves are wild respond. Even a few of the pups add to the chorus with their little Orrroos.
Magnus slides down against the wall, his hand to his mouth, his breath coming in hitched groans. His brother squats next to him, his hands tucked under his arms.
“What’s wrong with him?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Constantine says. It’s curious. He sounds angry, but he doesn’t smell like it. Anger has a bright burn to it, but he smells like carrion and steel and soot, like anger has burned through him so often that only ash remains. It’s overwhelming, which explains why I didn’t understand earlier what had bothered Leonora, what itched at the back of my brain in the Meeting House. I collapse to my knees, my hands on the floor on either side of the young man, getting close enough so that the weak senses of this form can sort through all the human smells to the bitterness of black walnut and juniper, a wild stronger than any Shifter has a right to be.
“What is your name?” I whisper, trying to keep the frantic edge from my voice.
“His name is Magnus.”
“I’m talking to him.” I raise my hand stiff in the air, commanding quiet. “What is your real name?”
“His name is Magnus,” Constantine says again. “And he is my brother.”
There is a dark, sharp edge to his voice like chipped obsidian, but his eyes are green like Clear Pond in the summer when the light streams through at an angle, making the water glow pale green, streaked with the shadows of trees.
“He can’t be,” I say, turning back to Magnus. “He’s not even a Shifter.”
Something chases across Constantine’s face but then it tightens. His hand searches the back of his waistband like he’s looking for something that he doesn’t find. “He’s not human.”
I wave my hand dismissively. “Of course not,” I say. “He’s one of us. He’s Pack.”
The Shifter takes a step back, his brow furrowing a moment in disbelief before he laughs. “How? He’s never changed. In twelve years. Not once. Tell her, Magnus,” he says, reaching out for the young man. “Tell her who you are.”
He pulls his hand away when Magnus whimpers.
“Gea, wulf,” I say in the Old Tongue. “Ge mé secgon. Hwa eart þu?”
Yes, wolf. Tell me. Who you are?
The young man begins to rock, his breath a torment.
“I don’t know,” he says quietly.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“What is your Pack?”
“I don’t know anything,” he whimpers, but he doesn’t deny the possibility of a Pack. Now he looks toward Constantine, pleading with him. “Con? I can’t. I…”
I move my hand toward his face.
“You saw,” the Shifter snaps. “He doesn’t like to be touched. Not when he’s like this. His skin hurts. Everything…hurts…”
His voice fades as I tilt Magnus’s chin up, doing for this wolf what I did for Lorcan, what I have done for every member of the Great North Pack over and over again. I set my face next to his and leave a little bit of myself on his skin. His dark hair moves with my breath, but he doesn’t stiffen or move away. He relaxes into my touch.
I have you, wolf. I have you back.
I whimper a little because the wild, while easily lost, is so rarely found. When I pull away, I take not only the faint trace of his mark. Blood oozes from my palm and down my wrist. I wipe it away from the corner of his mouth, but more bubbles out.
“Eudemos,” I whisper without turning. “Get Tristan.”
Eudemos runs for the door, the sturdy floorboard creaking beneath him.
“What hurts, wolf?”
Magnus pinches his eyes closed.
The door opens again, readmitting Eudemos accompanied by Tristan, whose teeth are buried in an apple. He is wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt with a blue police box that says My other car is a TARDIS. It is a joke, our doctor explained to me once, but it was too complicated. Leonora has reassured me that I can still interact with most humans without understanding it.
“Tristan. This is Magnus.” His name comes out like it’s in quotes, but that can’t be helped. “Heal him.”
Tristan pops the last of the apple into his mouth and wipes at the juice that runs down his chin. He dries his fingers on his thighs.
He kneels down. “Hello, Magnus. My name is Tristan. I’m what passes for a doctor in these parts.”
“What do you mean ‘passes for’?” Constantine surges forward, instantly protective.
“He did his residency at Massachusetts General,” I say, “where he specialized in internal medicine and sarcasm.”
“It’s really more facetiousness than sarcasm, Alpha.”
“That doesn’t matter: it’s a human habit and it confuses the Pack.”
“Well, wolf,” Tristan says, taking a few quick diagnostic sniffs. “What seems to be the problem?”
Magnus looks warily at Constantine.
“Let him see, Magnus. If he hurts you, I will kill him.”
“Ahhh, hyperbole.” Tristan peers into the narrow opening of Magnus’s mouth, then pulls a pen light from his shirt pocket. “That’s another thing we don’t get nearly enough of at Home…lands…” His voice falters and he purses his lips, looking at the crooked teeth stained with blood. At the drop falling from a canine.
“I need him in Medical,” says Tristan, standing once more, all sarcasm and facetiousness gone.
“Eudemos, help him.”
The Shifter starts after them before I manage to raise myself from the floor. I shoot out my hand, grabbing his ankle, and he freezes as I feel the ridged skin under my fingers, then look for the brown and burgundy scars around his ankle that I know will be there.
“I fell,” he says, pulling away from my hand.
“Hunters have set enough snares on Homelands for me to know a ligature mark when I feel one.”
With his toe, he nudges the hem of his jeans down, and at that moment, Magnus groans, the sound carrying both through the open window and from the connecting wall between my office and Medical.
“You have to believe we are trying to help,” I say. “There aren’t enough wolves in the world for me to be careless of even one.”
“Really? How about the ‘wolf’ you ripped open and left to die? Or was that too deliberate to be careless?”
“Arthur,” I say coldly, “is paying the price for your interference in the Pack.” Our former Deemer, the dog who betrayed us to August, would have been found guilty under the law, but the Iron Moon was almost here—hunters were almost here—and we didn’t have time for for-speakers and against-speakers and the casting of stones into the Thing, the way of our law. So Arthur took it upon himself to kill the Deemer, knowing the penalty was death.
I pick up my cup, holding it tight as though I’m trying to warm my hands, even though it is, as always, cold.
“Humans say even a wolf’s kindness is cruel. We say even a wolf’s cruelty is kind. Silver had just been made Deemer. Killing Arthur would have been the easy way out; it would have followed the letter of the law. But…” I take a sip of frigid coffee to disguise the break in my voice before I start again. “But the law required he be punished, so Silver found a way that satisfied the law and allowed him to live.”
When I set down the mug, he looks at the cartoon deer and the words The buck stops here. Maybe he will find it funny. Erika had written me a note explaining the joke—dollar = buck, male deer = buck—but I have never quite understood it. Wolves are not known for their sense of humor.
“How old is he?”
“Magnus? I don’t know. Not exactly. He hasn’t grown much since I found him in the youth center.”
“What is a youth center?”
“A detention facility,” he says. “In western Canada.”
Leonora has a whole pamphlet translating the words humans use to protect themselves from uncomfortable ideas: Passed away. Downsized. Enhanced interrogation. Detention facility. “So he was in a prison for children?”
“He’d been living on the streets. Stealing. They had to put him somewhere.”
The pups have found a spool of garden twine and are chasing it around the grass, unwinding as they go. This close to Home Pond, there is no need for supervision but they are never truly alone. No wolf would allow one of their own to end up in a prison for children, so it can only mean that his pack is dead.
“Has he always been sick?”
“Yes,” Constantine starts, then hesitates. “No, not like this. At first, it was his teeth. It would come for a few days but then subside. Now it’s spread to his stomach and his joints. His skin sometimes. It’s hard for him to eat.”
He looks at something on my desk.
I can see the muscles along his jaw working. “August called him a pet. A child grows up, he said. Leaves. Not a pet.”
There’s a dull silver disk next to the juveniles’ practice SATs. He stares at it, turning it slowly.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“This? It’s a… It’s a compass,” he says, picking the thing up. “It tells directions. So…” He holds it on the flat of his hand. “So, that’s north.”
I look down at his hand. “What’s north?”
“Where the arrow is pointing.”
There is a circle with the letters and an attenuated diamond. Half of the attenuated diamond is painted red. We can smell north. Hear north. Feel north. Taste north. “Why would someone need an arrow to tell them north?”
“In case you need to go north. Or south or any other direction.”
I need to go toward prey, away from hunters. To water, away from fire. To my wolves. I don’t need to go north.
“Hmmph.”
“So why do you have it?” he asks.
“A hiker dropped it last moon.”
He turns it around, examining a dark smudge on the back.
“We didn’t eat him if that’s what you’re thinking. We watched him until the Iron Moon was over and then when we had thumbs and Wi-Fi, we filed for injunctive relief.”
“Alpha?” Ove sticks his head in to remind me about the divestiture meeting but as soon as the door is open, wolves start to crowd in with questions about discipline and firewood and insurance premiums. Some I can answer immediately, others I need to think about, but wolves need decisiveness, so I simply tell them they will have to wait while I take one of the awkwardly cut pieces of scrap paper the Year of First Shoes make as they practice using fingers.
I pull out the pencil from behind my ear.
The Shifter stands, his hand stretched in front of him, staring at me.