by Maria Vale
After staring at it for a few moments, I take it loosely in one hand. Evie pulls her fingers to her nose, indicating that I should sniff her dead husband’s sweaty shirt. I am, understandably I think, reluctant, but she pushes it closer, insistent. Go ahead. I exhale, hold it to my nose, and breathe in deeply. Then I shrug and shake my head. It’s exactly what I’d expect a man’s sweaty shirt would—
Wait.
A second breath and a third and he’s there. Not the shape of his nose or the color of his eyes or the curl of his hair. But in my mind, he is there, cool and stony and unchanging.
I close my eyes and breathe in again.
Protective and remote.
A mountain dressed in Beyond Salvation Army flannel.
“Do you see?”
I know she doesn’t mean see, in that narrow human sense of photons hitting my eyes. This is just one of those ways in which words fail us. I don’t see him, but I know him. I know what he was like. I feel his strength and I feel his remove.
“Yes.”
“John’s brother was Alpha. His father was Alpha. He was born into a pack—the only pack—that had known security for generations. The only threat to their safety was the occasional random hunter. I needed that when I first came to the Great North frightened and angry and alone. I was always grateful to him. Respected him. We were together because we were the two strongest wolves and that is what was expected. You…you are nothing like him.”
Stretching out the collar of my shirt, I pull it up over my nose and inhale.
“That’s not going to work,” she says. “None of us can read ourselves.”
“So what am I like?” I ask, pulling the shirt down again. “What was it you say we all smell like? Carrion and iron?”
She leans forward, mouth open, the alae of her nose flared, and breathes me in deeply. A tiny smile plays around the corners of her mouth, then she lets go of the breath with a sigh.
“Steel and carrion. Though for a long time, you smelled like ash. Like land that had been burned over. Now you smell”—she sighs—“nice. Like water and the life at water’s edge.”
Nice. Like water.
Not sure I like the sound of that.
“And Poul?” I don’t like the way I say his name either.
“Poul?” She shrugs, then opens her mouth, her tongue feeling the smooth fronts of her teeth. “Slate.”
Iron straps begin to tighten around my chest. “Do all Alphas smell like rock?”
“What are you talking about?”
“John smells like the mountain; you smell like granite; Poul, like slate. It’s—”
“And if you hit slate at the wrong angle, it splits. These words are nothing. They are just attempts to describe a thing that can’t be described.”
“Still, that’s some coincidence, don’t you think?”
She takes John’s shirt back, hanging it carefully on the hanger. “Humans have a lot of ceremonies where they all get together. Leonora says it’s because they aren’t truly joined the way we are. Anyway, our rituals are mostly private. Quiet. Like the one when I became Alpha of the Great North Pack. Every Alpha has done it: we go to the safe Offland, where we keep our most precious documents and a few things. Very few. But in this safe, in a drawer, in a ziplock bag is our most precious object. We keep it inside a tightly sealed gold box.” She screws her hands, her muscles working as she remembers some kind of effort. “I really had to work that thing to get it open.”
“So what’s inside? Like a crown or something?”
“What use does a wolf have for a crown?” She fits the waxed bag back into the back of the closet.
“I don’t know. What use does a wolf have for a gold box?”
“Gold doesn’t oxidize. It won’t change the scent of the fabric inside. Of the”—she waves her finger back and forth at her neck—“the neckerchief our first Alpha wore when she put on skin and breeches to negotiate for Homelands. When it was all over, she wiped her fingers on it. You can still see the ink stains.” She puts her hand to her face. “I laid my cheek against it. Taking a little of her and of every other Alpha that has come before me and leaving a little of myself. It’s what we do to substitute for being marked by our predecessor because no Alpha dies of old age.”
She leans her cheek against her hand as though still feeling the frayed piece of stained cloth. “There has never been an Alpha stronger than Ælfrida and she smelled like water. Like you do. A mountain is strong, but water will still turn it to sand.”
I try to say her name, but those steel bands around my chest are so tight that my voice is broken. I don’t care about being stronger than a mountain, I don’t care about Poul or John or any of it. All I can hear are her words pinging around my skull, so matter-of-fact.
Because no Alpha dies of old age.
I want her to live until any chance of me surviving her has long passed. I’ve found a woman who is big enough; now I will move heaven and earth to make sure that the world is big enough for her. I push her against the door, my arms bent on either side of her, the great mass of my shoulders curving to give her protection that she would never admit to needing.
I don’t want to make the world safe for fucking cabbages. I want to make the world safe for her.
Holding her head in my hands, I let my eyes run over her face again and again, indulging in the simple, jealous pleasure of knowing what she looks like.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at you.”
She smiles and lifts her chin. “And what do you see, Constantine?”
I tell her some things. Not everything. I tell her about the elegant curve between her forehead and the line of her nose. I tell her about the long arabesque that leads from her narrow chin to the wide back of her jaw, down the sinew of her neck. I don’t tell her that the finial is created by the bite marks left by her dead mate.
I tell her about the black brows that bend upward like the wings of a seabird, but I don’t tell her how they are so often pulled together in worry. I tell her about the high, full cheeks the color of burnished oak. I do not remind her of the scar she got trying to save a friend who didn’t know she needed saving. I tell her about the filigree of tiny curls making their escape to frame her forehead. I tell her about eyes the color of amber. I do not say that like amber, they hold inside them the memory of lost lives.
I tell her about the soft cushion of her lips lined in bronze fading to the mauve of an evening sky at the center. I do not tell her how it pulls me in like a bee to nectar.
Instead, I show her. My mouth rough against her, my tongue pressing through her death-dealing teeth to the silken hollows of her mouth. With my knee, I push her knees apart while my cotton-covered cock presses against the fold between her legs. She rocks against me. Cupping her ass, I pull her up, pushing deeper in my possessed dry humping until her eyes go hazy and she pushes me away hard.
I’ve seen that look before: the little half smile, the dreaminess around her eyes, but still focused. Her thumb traces the dark line of hair to my waistband. A small thing, the scrape of her finger on my abdomen, until her thumb presses under the elastic tightness, the back of her nail catching on the ridge of my crown.
She smiles at the involuntary jerking, doing it again as her fingers scrape along my back, sliding my boxers down, one hand rubbing along my cock, the other gliding along my ass. She bends her leg, her foot pushing down until I am naked, her knee against my inner thigh.
She writhes against me, a low hum vibrating deep in her chest. I put my hand on her sternum to capture it and respond with a growl of my own. Her nipple sweeps across the thin skin at the inside of my wrist, igniting a burn that travels up my arm, circling my heart. My hand flows down her breast, cupping underneath, my fingers outstretched. I catch her nipple between my lips, knowing now the perfect balance of pressure and gentleness until
she groans and moves, flexing hips against me, leaning hard into the aching ridge. I pull away just enough so I can slide my cock not in but between. She clutches her legs together, forcing every hard needy inch of me closer. Her fingers clutch at my ass.
And when she is nearly there, when her mouth is soft, her breathing hard, and her eyes unfocused, I finally dive in, feeling the powerful ripples of her coming pull out my own.
I watch her sleep and know that what I want is beyond simple lust that can be slaked by a coming or two. This is marrow deep, and no matter how much seed I spill inside her, the need will still be there.
Forever.
Chapter 29
Evie
I know it bothers him.
I can see it in his eyes as I scrub all the places where he has kissed me, touched me, sucked on me, and entered me.
“It’s the only way I can do this, have a few moments that are just for us. Beyond this, there is no ‘me.’ No Evie. There is only the Alpha of the Great North Pack.”
What more can I tell him? He knows that we are fighting a losing battle here and that when I call for them to make a sacrifice, they must know absolutely that I have made every sacrifice myself.
It doesn’t seem to be enough.
I hand him the washcloth. He stares at it like it’s poisoned before looking up like an idea has just occurred to him.
“How about Elijah? He’s an Alpha and he’s mated to a human.”
“You said it. He’s an Alpha. Yes, he’s been fighting challengers for thirty years, and yes, he can handle himself, but I was the one who made the decision to let Thea stay, so if things go wrong, I am responsible. I am the Alpha. There is no one else above me.”
He keeps soaping up the washcloth.
“And when the time comes and you’re…” His voice fades out as he looks at the foamy mass between his hands.
“When I’ve recovered enough to be fertile again?”
His biceps quiver, his jaw slides forward.
“You’ll fuck Poul then?”
“Yes.”
“You know he doesn’t give a damn about Evie. He only wants the Alpha.” He tosses the washcloth into the sink.
“I know.”
I’m tired and Thea has gotten hold of a picture she says we need to deal with now. And the truth is no amount of explaining is going to make him understand that a Pack is stability in the middle of chaos. A thing of tradition and our tradition requires strong wolves to mate with stronger wolves to make still stronger wolves.
“Constantine…”
“I’m not going to do this,” he says. He bends over, grabbing his clothes, and starts for the door. “I’m going swimming. But don’t worry. By the time I’m done, no one will know what I have done. That I have committed the crime of touching the woman I love.”
Love?
He’s already halfway to Home Pond by the time I open the door. He doesn’t turn around and I can’t call to him.
I’m not doing well.
He dumps his clothes on the chair at the end of the dock.
Turn around, Constantine.
He shakes out his arms, the arms that have held me and made me feel secure. He stretches out his legs, the legs that have supported both of us when my thighs were tight around his hips and he was buried deep inside me.
See me.
Then he dives off the end and disappears into the cold and quiet where no one can find him.
“Alpha?”
With a sigh, I turn away.
Chapter 30
Constantine
After my parents died, I had been angry. Over and over, I was angry. Angry that they were dead. Angry that they had lied to me. Angry that I hadn’t had a chance to confront them about those lies before they died. Angry at being sent to August. Angry at being different, but without knowing exactly how I was different. By the time I was in my twenties, anger had burned through me so often that there was no longer any tinder in my soul for it to burn.
Now there is. I feel the hard, dry knot of things that are hard to disentangle: My fury over being erased. My confusing need for Evie to be both bigger than life and small enough to be mine alone. My anger at myself for becoming one more thing she needs to worry about, when I promised myself I wouldn’t.
The wind is blowing hard from the west, bringing with it a wall of gray and projecting bright light against clouds like an old movie theater before smoking was outlawed. Slow and deliberate, I swim back toward the Great Hall. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. Not sorry, wolves don’t understand sorry, but something.
The problem is she is surrounded as she so often is: Tara, Silver, and Tiberius. She looks at something on a laptop and closes her eyes and stretches out two fingers on her right bicep.
It’s a thing she does, to keep count of her worries.
The back door bangs shut behind Elijah’s hulking form. He rolls his shoulders back, then forward again and turns his head, eyeing every wolf in the room, challenging them all. To what I don’t know, until I see the woman with the black hair, Thea Villalobos, the Goddess of the City of Wolves, blocked by his bulk.
The Alpha listens to the human, sliding two more fingers next to the two already splayed. The human pulls out her camera and flicks through something with her thumb, then shows the screen to the other wolves. Two fingers emerge on the opposite bicep.
Evie’s eyes catch mine, her mouth open as though she wants to say something, but she closes it again. I head out the back.
The air is stiller now, if possible, and pregnant. The wall of black clouds trailing graphite streaks comes closer. A wolf sleeping near the cold frame lifts his muzzle, his mouth open, and tastes the wind. Shaking himself off, he saunters toward the trees.
I follow him.
No longer bothering to hide themselves from me, wolves settle in under the layers of leaves. Some are curled up in the spaces between trunks; some have found relief from the still heat by digging into the forest duff and circling into the cool, damp, fragrant earth.
The sky turns black overhead and the canopy begins to shudder. The wind is strong enough to dislodge even green leaves. A shutter bangs against the Great Hall until someone pulls it closed. Then heavy drops fall, slashing on wood and leaves. Even here protected by the trees, heavy drops come through when the sky opens up. A gray wolf with a dark mask trots over to a beige wolf, shakes himself off, and drops next to her. She opens her eyes but closes them again when his nose touches hers. Her ear rotates, searching for something. She sighs and shifts her body, relaxing again.
That’s when I hear the sound of pups barking. Coyotes don’t come this close to Home Pond, so they are allowed to wander without adult supervision. Even I can tell they are curious rather than frightened, which explains the benign disinterest of the beige wolf’s ear.
I head toward them to see what they’ve found.
At first I can’t tell; they’re all gathered around at the far end of a fallen log. Maybe they’ve cornered a mouse or a rabbit. A spray of golden drops arcs through the air.
“Rahrp!” barks a tortoiseshell pup, jumping backward.
A tiny dimpled hand jerks into the air.
When I lean over the moldering tree, I am confronted by the last thing I would have expected to find on Homelands. A baby. Not a pup. A full-out naked baby. He has bronze skin, dark curls, and a look of pure panic in his unblinking black eyes. He lies squashed against a log. He’s not hurt. He’s not stuck, because I lift him easily enough. The top of his ear is bloody, but when I wipe it away with my thumb, it’s nothing, just the marks of pup teeth.
In my arms, he jerks again. I lower my head to his and draw in a deep breath.
“What the hell have you done, Nils?”
I realize how graceless these bodies are. As a wolf pup, he can run, chew, bark, jump. Be out in the rain. No
w with this big head, weak neck, arms and legs that move in fits and starts, two tiny, flat, useless teeth, and naked skin that provides no protection from the heavy rain coming through the hole in the canopy, Nils shivers against my chest.
Holding him in one arm, I slowly unbutton my shirt with the other and slide him next to my T-shirted chest, covering him as best I can with the thin layer of flannel.
His fingers and toes are tightly curled, his mouth opens and shuts soundlessly save for a damp smacking. Then he sneezes and his arm flings out in shock. Thunder sounds in the distance.
We’re not far from the Great Hall, where his Alpha is, his mother. Nils stares at me, one eye pushed into my torso, the other circling around, confused, four little fingers clinging for support to my arm, a miniature version of Evie’s fingers propped on her bicep as she tries to remember what everyone needs.
When I think about it, I probably know more about babies than she does. After all, I’ve seen human fathers jiggle them up and down, trying to stop them from crying. I’ve seen human mothers feed them. I even—briefly—saw a father trying to change a diaper on the tiny damp counter between sinks in a gas-station restroom.
The sky cracks again, close like the snap of a wet towel in a locker room, and Nyala breaks into a run toward the Alpha’s nearby cabin, followed by the other pups. As soon as they reach the porch, they shake themselves off, then push in through the swinging flap with absolutely no compunction about letting themselves into someone else’s home, because it’s not a home, it’s just one of the stage sets for roles they must play.
Juggling Nils from one arm to the other, I follow them in, stripping off my soaking-wet shirt.
I hang it over the showerhead, next to the brush and shampoo she uses to erase me.
Something scratches at the front door. A wild juvenile a little too large for the pup door is stuck halfway through, his legs scrabbling against the outside until he finally pops through, shaking himself so hard, his back legs slip out from under him.
I push the stiff button on the brass plate to turn on the lights that dot the room with soft, warm light.