Evie
I dreamed.
It started out normally enough, with anticipation, waiting. Keeping low and silent, listening, scenting, looking. I don’t know what we’re herding or where we are herding it, only that someone I trust has the far flank.
I must be upwind, but why? No hunter waits upwind. Suddenly, all my wolves turn, surging around me. I see the terror in their eyes as they pass, smell it on their fur, but have no idea what they are running from. I run around snarling and biting and trying to get them to follow. I don’t know what’s ahead, but whatever it is, I can’t do it alone.
No wolf stays, and soon, the pack is nothing but the whisper of hundreds of quiet pads fading into the forest.
A figure on two legs emerges from the mist. He is dressed in leaves and carries a sprouting stem. In my relief, I call to my wolves to tell them to come back. It is the Grenemann, the Green Man come to protect his forest, to protect us, wolves, the protectors of the woods.
I bound toward him, toward the figure dressed in green and brown, carrying a stick. Toward the man in camouflage with a gun.
His eyes are pine dark, streaked with the green of bright-summer leaves.
My eyes snap open, my heart beating. It takes me a moment to recognize the scent of dried birch and cold water, to hear the small breezes sweeping through the aspens. To see Constantine across from me, one hand warm and sleep-slack under mine.
He has put towels over me.
I slide my hand free. He twitches but doesn’t wake. I begin the painful process of sitting up. The rib isn’t broken so it’s pointless to go to Tristan only to hear him say “It’s a flesh wound” and offer me a Tic Tac. Not that I think he’d be so brazen, but one never knows.
The walk back to my cabin is slow. I step cautiously around obstacles I would have leapt over and walk terrain I would normally run. I keep the towel wrapped tight around me so that wolves drawn by their curiosity to the smell of blood don’t see the extent of their Alpha’s injury.
In my cabin, I peel away the towel and the wound opens again. I look for a black T-shirt and start the slow process of getting dressed. One Salty Bitch, it says, though I really don’t feel like it.
I contemplate my hair band, but I would really need both hands for that. Instead, I finger comb with my left hand, loosening the sleep-crushed hair and double-checking for burrs. I feel the fang mark on my cheek.
When I walk, I am careful not to favor my right side.
The Pack quiets as soon as I climb stiffly up the stairs. There’s no disguising that I’ve been hurt, but as long as I pretend the injury doesn’t matter, my wolves will too.
In the mudroom, I lean against the wall. Bending is excruciatingly painful and there’s no point to it, so I scrape off each shoe with the toe of the other. When I open the heavy main door, the muscles around my torso contract and my ribs ache.
We are all playing our roles. The Pack bends over their bowls of buckwheat and plates of eggs while I walk on. Head up, back straight. Jaw tight. My right hand trembles as I reach for the coffee cup. My left is steadier. Best to use the left.
“Sit down,” Sigegeat whispers to someone behind me. I know who it is without looking, and sure enough, Constantine says, “She’s hurt.”
More wolves start wrestling at the table, meaning it’s time for me to take charge.
When I turn, picking up an oatcake so it will look casual and unconcerned, I catch his green eyes staring at me, like I knew I would. He is still standing despite the combined efforts of Sigegeat, Inge, and Järv trying to force him to sit down. My lids flutter down for a moment and I shake my head, hoping that he isn’t so human that I have to put everything into words.
I rub the back of my hand, trying to wipe away the trace warmth of his palm supporting it. Finally, Constantine sits down, angrily yanking his arms away, and I manage a controlled descent without showing how much it hurts. I reach for the butter and the remnants of last summer’s mulberry jam.
A wolf snarls.
Skirmishes are a common enough occurrence, but I have to be careful. It may be the usual posturing over hierarchy or fucking rights, but wolves will act out if they fear the Alpha is weak. They need to feel I am in control and can’t help but test the issue if they are unsure.
I watch the Pack carefully. Luckily, it’s nothing but a minor tussle over dominance between the Gamma mate and the Delta of the 13th. Esme, their Alpha, jumps in quickly, banging them around until they come back to the table looking sheepish, their heads cocked to the side. Waiting for Esme to mark them so that they know, whatever their pettinesses, they belong to something bigger.
Had I not been watching so carefully, though, I might not have noticed Cassius take advantage of the chaos to knock into Constantine. I wouldn’t have seen tiny Theo picking up the folded piece of paper in his teeth because anything that falls to the floor belongs to the pups.
I would, however, have noticed Cassius pinioning Theo’s little tail with his big fucking foot. No way I would have missed that because Theo yelps loudly and tries to skitter away. Leaping over the table, I grab Cassius and throw him bodily toward Elijah, my shredded skin screaming at me to stop until Elijah takes hold of Cassius by the collar and drags him away, the Shifter’s feet churning desperately against the floor, trying to keep upright so he won’t choke on the fabric tight around his trachea.
Constantine sits on the floor holding the whimpering Theo, but the piece of paper that had been in Theo’s spitty mouth is gone.
You see, my furious heart says. You let yourself be deluded. There is no one to hold your hand while you hold the Great North together. This is on you alone.
I am so tired and my body hurts and I don’t know how to save the forever wolves and I have let Shifters into Homelands and one of them was dangerous enough to make me lose track of who I am.
The Alpha of the Great North Pack.
I drop to my knees, pulling the tiny pup from the Shifter’s hands. A sweet cheese dumpling bounces onto the floor and Theo jumps away, his little tail high and straight as a flag.
Then I turn back to the Shifter, my jaw trembling as—
He holds out the tightly folded piece of paper.
“Alpha?” he says as the wave of my anger recedes, leaving my heart flopping on the shore, panting and breathless.
My left hand stinks of Cassius. My right hand is still holding that now-crumbled oatcake slathered with butter and last summer’s mulberries.
“Should I read it?” he asks and I nod, licking at the butter and mulberries while he unfolds it carefully because it’s been stapled together by pup teeth.
“It’s for Julia.” He points to the name on the outside. “He tells her to get away from…Logan?…and meet him in the basement the day after tomorrow. At breakfast.”
He holds it out to me and I almost laugh with relief. It’s a mash note. Constantine was only a messenger boy. “Lorcan,” I finally say. “It’s Lorcan. Cassius thinks the 12th’s Alpha wants Julia, though if he took a single whiff of him, he’d know it wasn’t true.”
He stares at the little piece of paper.
“That man, the one who’s always sniffing around you…” he starts.
The door opens and closes on Rieka, naked and gnawing on a hoof. She scans the room, looking for me. She’ll find me soon enough, but I haven’t finished looking over the USDA prelicense application package (Class C), so I really have nothing to say to her. I crouch down lower, hiding behind the backs around me. She’ll find me soon enough.
“You mean Poul?”
“Yes.”
Constantine folds the page carefully, lining up the holes made by Theo’s sharp teeth.
“Does he find what he’s looking for?”
“Alpha?” says Rieka, standing at the end of the row made by benches and wolf backs.
Letting out a pained breath, I push myself up again.
“No,” I say quietly.