Æcewulf: Forever wolf. Real wolf. The Iron Moon moves Pack along the spectrum of their wildness. Pack who are already wild at the beginning of the Iron Moon are pushed further along and become æcewulfs. There is no changing back.
Banwulf: Bone Wolf. This is what the packs call the wolf tasked with announcing the end of days. The wolf humans call Garm. “Now Garm howls loud before his cave; the fetters will burst, and the wolf run free.” —Völuspá
bedfellow: A kind of mate-in-training. Since Pack couplings are based on strength, bedfellows must be prepared to fight challengers for rights to their bedfellow’s body: cunnan-riht.
Bredung: The ceremony by which two Pack are mated. It comes from the Old Tongue word for braiding and symbolizes the commitment of an individual to mate and to land and to Pack. The commitment is iron-clad.
Clifrung: Clawing. The harshest punishment short of death by Slitung in Pack law. A wolf who is clawed becomes wearg, an outlaw.
cunnan-riht: Mounting rights.
Dæling: The ceremony that determines both the initial hierarchy and pairings of an echelon. Since challenges are a fact of Pack life, this will change.
Eardwrecca: Banished. Packs are intensely social and exiles rarely survive.
echelon: An age group, typically of Pack born within five or six years of one another. Each echelon has its own hierarchy. Its Alpha is responsible to the Alpha of the whole pack.
Gemyndstow: The memory place. A circle of stones with the names of dead wolves and the dates of their last hunts.
Gran: An elder. The word does not imply blood relationship, as family ties are largely inconsequential in the face of the stronger ties of Pack.
Iron Moon: The day of the full moon and the two days surrounding it. During these three days, the Pack is wild and must be in wolf form.
lying-in: Pack’s mutable chromosomes mean that pregnancy is rare. When it does happen, the last month is fraught as pups change into babies and back again. The mother must change with them before her body rejects them. It is exhausting.
nidling: A lone wolf at the bottom of an echelon’s hierarchy. Because lone wolves are considered disruptive, the nidling is forced into a kind of indentured servitude to his or her Alpha pair. They rarely last long.
Offland: Anywhere that is not Homelands, the Great North’s territory in the Adirondacks. Offlanders return to Homelands only for the Iron Moon and the occasional holiday.
Pack: What humans would call werewolves. Pack can turn into wolves at any time and usually prefer to be in wolf form, but during the Iron Moon, they must be wild. These three days are both their greatest weakness and, because it binds them together, their greatest strength.
schildere: A shielder is a protector, the lowest degree of wolf pairing. From the Old Tongue. In the youngest Pack, shielders protect one another from being eaten by coyotes.
seax: The dagger worn by all full-fledged adult Pack when at Homelands.
Slitung: Flesh tearing. The ultimate punishment. Every wolf participates so that the whole Pack bears responsibility for the life they have failed.
Shifter: Shifters are not bound by the Iron Moon, and since humans are dominant, Shifters see no advantage in turning into something as vulnerable as a wolf. Unfortunately, they have adopted many of humans’ less-desirable traits, while retaining the strength and stronger senses of a wolf-changer—the worst of both worlds for Pack. In the Old Tongue, they are called Hwerflic, meaning changeable, shifty.
Wearg: Among Pack, it means outlaw, bloodthirsty. Among humans, it means outlaw or monster and derives from the word for wolf.
westend: Waster, destroyer. Old Tongue for human.
Wulfbyrgenna: The wolf tombs. It is what the Pack calls the coyotes who eat their remains.
Year of First Shoes: This is the first year that pups start changing into skin and, as the name implies, the year they start wearing shoes and clothes. It marks their transition from pups to juveniles.