A Wolf Apart

by Maria Vale

  “I’ve been fighting wolves longer than he’s been alive. He will not win.”

  “Don’t underestimate him, Alpha.”

  She stamps her naked feet on the grass. She is more resistant to cold than most, but even she feels the iced water of Home Pond.

  “And why are you so set against me, Quicksilver?”

  “I’m not set against you. I barely know you. But you barely know the Homelands. Everyone’s in a bad mood. The Alpha’s control is weak at least until she is fully recovered. There is a lot of anger against Tiberius. They blame him for John’s death. And then you decide to challenge Evie for what? For more power?”

  “I’m not doing it for power. I need to come home. I need—”

  “You need? We just lost four wolves. We lost our Alpha. We lost the Great Hall. We almost lost our pups. We do not need or want an Alpha who is so human that he puts his own needs first.”

  Her head cocks slightly, her eyes shooting toward the horizon. “It’s almost time,” she says, already struggling out of her sweater.

  I run toward the Meeting House, pulling at my tie. By the time I get there, the Great North is assembled around the steps, huge and fierce and naked, too proud and too hot-blooded to huddle under blankets even in the sharp cold of the last breath of an Adirondack winter. Evie closes the door and stands at the top next to Victor, our Deemer. Her face is expressionless, but Victor nods once.

  The Deemer is exempt from hard work so that he can devote his time to thinking about and teaching our law. He is also exempt from challenges, so that fear does not have a role in the dispensing of it. Unlike the rest of the Pack, his body is thick, almost heavy, in stark contrast to Evie. Without her clothes, it’s easy to see how much she lost. She is a tall woman with broad shoulders and strong legs, but pregnancy, lying-in, and nursing have drained her, and her bones seem about to break through her espresso skin.

  Her expression doesn’t change as I push my way through the Pack. Everyone clearly already knows, but a challenge has its formalities. As soon as I open my mouth, an angry rumble of suppressed growls flows through the Pack. It stops again when the Deemer holds up an imperious hand.

  I strip as I speak. Shoes, socks, and pants are easy enough to slip out of when we change, but if the change hits before you get out of your button-down shirt and tie, you’re stuck with it for the next seventy-two hours. A wolf in a silk tie and Egyptian cotton is a fool, and the Pack does not suffer cowards, weaklings, or fools gladly.

  “Evie Kitwanasdottir. By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors”—my tie falls to snow and earth churned under the Pack’s feet—“and under the watchful eye of our Pack, I, Elijah Sorensson”—I struggle out of my shirt, straining to pull it over the expanse of my shoulders—“challenge you for Primacy of the Great North.” My cap-toe Oxfords land in the muck, followed by my socks. “With fang and claw, I will attend upon you the last day of this Iron Moon.”

  Hopping on one leg, I kick off my pants and briefs. Damp mud soaks through the camouflage I’ve worn so long. When my foot comes down, it lands on the silk tie, and my Offland leash sinks into the icy sludge.

  The Pack rustles and then parts, letting Tiberius through. Silver walks by his side, snapping at a wolf who doesn’t get out of their way fast enough.

  “Evie Kitwanasdottir,” he repeats. “By the ancient rites and laws of our ancestors and under the watchful eye of our Pack, I, Tiberius Malasson, challenge you for Primacy of the Great North. With fang and claw, I will attend upon you the last day of this Iron Moon.”

  The rumble starts up again.

  “Our laws are clear,” Victor says. “If two wolves challenge for the same position, only the dominant may continue forward. On the last day of this moon, Elijah Sorensson and Tiberius Malasson will meet to determine which is allowed to fight for primacy of the Great North.”

  Then Evie and Victor walk down the stairs to stand among the assembled wolves. I still can’t find anyone from the 9th.

  “You will win, Alpha,” says a voice behind me. Victor stands at my shoulder but takes care not to look at me.

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” he grunts. “The Pack has strayed. We need an Alpha who will bring us back to the Old Ways. Bring us back to greatness.”

  He glares at Tiberius with his mate. Silver runs her hand along the scars at his neck before her pale hand pulls his dark mouth to hers for one last kiss before the change.

  “Min coren,” she says in the Old Tongue. My chosen, my beloved.

  Victor has a sour, evil look in his eyes.

  “Ēadig wáþ.” Evie calls out the traditional blessing, wishing her wolves three days of happy wandering and hunting. She was not raised in the Great North, and her accent has always rung strange.

  When I repeat the blessing, it is perfect, unaccented as befits a wolf descended directly from the wolves of Mercia. The Deemer and a few others exchange smiles in recognition of my flawless diction.

  The 9th has finally joined the assembly. Clearly, they waited until the last minute. I run toward them, leaning in to mark each wolf as I do at the beginning and end of every Iron Moon. They all receive my mark, but they are stiff and resentful. Even Celia doesn’t look at me.

  There is something going on in the Pack that sits uncomfortably with me. I need to talk to them, find out what it is, and at least explain that I’m not doing this for something as trivial as power. But it’s too late: the little bones in my feet start to shuffle and change. My jaw begins to thrust forward, my tongue lengthens, my mouth rips open into my cheeks, and I collapse onto the slushy soil. This change I can’t control. It doesn’t start with my wrists; it hits me all at once. My feet, my shoulders, my hips. My face. Then my eyes and ears begin to rearrange themselves in my skull, leaving me deaf and blind. The only thing I hear is the thumping of my heart against a background of dull static.

  The prickling of my skin subsides and is replaced by the prickling of little pup claws clambering over my back as they search through the carpet of writhing adults, waiting for someone to hunt with. The bigger the wolf, the longer the change, and by the time my wolfish ears can hear the snuffling and shaking of fur and clacking of claws, most everyone else is turned. Tiberius is still in that awkward between moment. His little silver-furred mate doesn’t like me looking at his still-twitching body and lunges at me.

  I leap into the air and fall back to earth. I have no fight with her. I have no fight with any of them, because I love them all.

  I love them all.

  They think I am too human. They think that I have forgotten that our only real power is the power of sacrifice.

  The sacrifices John made were evident to everyone. In his hard work, in the scars on his body that he gladly took at every Bredung, when his blood was required to symbolize the bond of Pack and land and mates.

  They can’t see the sacrifices I’ve made Offland. No amount of blood or sweat could ever equal the pain of the alienation and the slow rot at my core.

  Evie is having trouble steering the Pack. They recognize weakness in a new leader and in a female still recovering from her lying-in. When she pushes a couple of the echelons to hunting grounds farther up the mountain, some wolves challenge her. Even weak though, she is a decisive fighter. She wastes no time in posturing and goes straight for the throat. Her flank glistens with blood.

  Victor is everywhere. Some wolves accept his marking; some do not. He does not approach Eudemos, Alpha of the 14th, Silver and Tiberius’s echelon.

  Celia, my shielder, snaps at him when he approaches the 9th. But then she snaps at me too when I try to approach Sarah.

  There will be plenty of time to prove that I have what it takes to be a great Alpha. My paws break through the brittle crust of snow as I follow the scent of a tick-weakened buck mingled with foraged wintergreen. When he is down, I gnaw only on the gristly lower hind leg, l
eaving the best parts for my echelon and the rest of the Pack. Though pups and the lower subordinates are the only ones who deign to eat from my offering.

  At night, the haunting calls of wolves echo around the mountains and make my heart ache. When I respond, my own howl breaks in the middle.

  Challenges all take place on the last day of the Iron Moon, and like everything else, there is a hierarchy. Wolves fighting for cunnan-riht to the 13th’s Gamma male start. Then, slowly, we move up to the most important challenge of each echelon. Tiberius and I will come last, as we are fighting for the highest position of all.

  Next to last. The last will be my fight with Evie.

  The paddock of low logs where we will fight is sprayed with the dark blood of old fights and the brighter blood of recent ones. Claws have already churned the icy earth into cold mud. Pacing back and forth, I watch one fight after another, waiting impatiently for my exile to end.

  The losing challenger to the 3rd Echelon’s Beta spot drags herself over the paddock wall, a large hunk of her hind leg hanging by a thread. Tara throws back her head in a long, sustained howl that lowers and then rises again before dying away.

  A high response that falls and then quickly rises and ends abruptly comes not from Tiberius but from his mate. I add my own low, menacing howl to the mix, just to remind the Pack that I, at least, know how to fucking howl.

  Tiberius breaks through the trees beyond the Boathouse and lopes toward the paddock. He is huge in skin, but wild, he is as big as night. The little silver wolf joins him, her muzzle dark with blood from the hunt. She leaps up, her front legs splayed across her mate’s shoulders, then gives him a big, open-jawed kiss across his ear.

  As he jumps over the low wall, I see he has become more graceful than the last time when he fought Solveig under the watchful eye of John. Both dead because of him. It is no small irony that he is defending Evie against me.

  Everything is crystal clear at the start. The silent wolves standing watch around the paddock, thin, gray clouds streaming from their mouths; the prickling of my shoulders as my hackles rise; my snarled greeting; the circling of his immense body.

  Tara’s howl to start.

  But then the clarity is lost, swept up in a blur of details that are sometimes relevant, sometimes not. The awkwardness of Tiberius’s body as he tries to back away from my first rush. A red-winged blackbird announcing its homesteading somewhere nearby. The feel of thick wolf hide giving way under the tearing pressure of my claws. The smell of blood. The anger in Celia’s eyes. The curled lips over the flash of sharp, white teeth. The whipping of winter-bare branches in the wind blowing down from the mountains. The taste of blood. Sarah’s distant, empty face. The high-pitched barks of tussling pups. The splashed landing of ducks on the water. The scent of skunk cabbage on some wolf’s paws.

  It is all there, swirling around my consciousness, but nothing distracts my focus as I wait for Tiberius to slip. As my jaws move almost on their own, directed by the memory of a hundred fights before, to Tiberius’s suddenly vulnerable throat.

  I feel his fur on my tongue.

  The sadness in Evie’s face. The triumph in Victor’s. There is something wrong here. I know it.

  I stop in midair and turn, my jaws closing on nothing. Tiberius lunges, his teeth around the top of my muzzle, close to my eye, with jaws capable of breaking bone. John had specifically commanded that we not maul each other’s faces as it raised comment Offland, but John is dead and the Shifter doesn’t clench tightly, but it’s enough, and the narrow passage of the sinus near my eye socket collapses with a crunch.

  My body hits the ground. I do not lower my ears, I do not pull in my tail, I do not submit, but if I try to get up, Tiberius’s canine will put out my eye.

  Tara finally gives the sharp bark signaling the end. Tiberius opens his jaws as gently as he can, but his fang still grinds along the bony orbit.

  Everyone leaves except Victor. As soon as we are alone, he jumps into the paddock and scrapes dirt at me with his hind leg.

  I don’t leave. Ours was the last fight, because, of course, Tiberius didn’t challenge Evie. He couldn’t have become Alpha if he’d wanted to, and he didn’t want to. Everything is as it was.

  The night falls, and my eye circles around in its socket exploring the pain. The other helplessly twinned with it watches the repeated procession of starry sky, looming mountains, old wood, and bloodstained earth.

  My sky, my mountains, my wood, my earth.

  Ðu londadl hǽðstapa.

  You landsick heath-wanderer.

  Chapter 15

  There’s nothing like iced water against naked skin to signal the end of yet another Iron Moon. One eye opens and swivels around the spattered wood before resting on the tall figure of my shielder.

  “Get up,” Celia says. “You can’t go to Iron Moon Table looking like that.”

  “Naah goin’ do dable.” I spit out something that feels hard. A piece of bone, maybe. Or a piece of Tiberius’s tooth.

  “Are your bones broken?”

  “Na.”

  “Are your internal organs damaged?”

  “Na.”

  “Then it is just a flesh wound, and you are expected at table.”

  “Fu’ you, Thelia.” I pull myself up and, with the newly reconstituted fingers, touch my right eye. It feels like a cantaloupe, but when I pull open the swollen lid, light leaks in, so at least the eyeball is still there.

  “Close both eyes.” She throws more icy water into my face, numbing the bruised, punctured skin and sending a stream up my nose. When I sniff in, the water screams its way into my sinus and mixes with blood. A huge clotted gob goes down my throat.

  Except for my face, the only other damage is the tears in the fascia of my abdomen where Tiberius anchored his hind claw.

  “Here.” She throws me something.

  Because I have only one eye, I misjudge the distance and fumble to catch it. Of course, my Offland clothes are in the mud where I left them, and I didn’t bring any other clothes because I was going to be Alpha and I wouldn’t need them.

  The Pack’s dry storage went up in the fire, so the pickings are slim. Sitting on the wood logs, I thread my blood- and mud-spattered legs into gray sweats. The worn, loose ribbing at the ankles flutters well above my ankles. The purple hoodie with the green-and-black fleece lining is simply tragic.

  Celia drops a pair of navy-blue flip-flops in front of me.

  I don’t put them on. Instead, I stare at the rough outlines of the Great Hall. The foundation is set, and a floor and studs mark where the walls will be.

  “Alpha, we are expected at the Meeting House.”

  As far as Celia is concerned, I challenged and I lost. Happens all the time. I’m still Alpha of the 9th. La-di-da. She doesn’t understand that I’ve given up my one chance to come home before I become as human as the Pack already thinks I am.

  She doesn’t understand that I did it at least in part for her.

  Stumbling on the low steps heading up to the construction site, I pull back a tarpaulin over what will be the big double doors. Memories flood through, filling the space between the studs with beloved detail. The floor pitted by generations of claws. The sofas covered with fur. The staircase buffed by pup’s bellies because we all sledded down with our legs outstretched until we grew big enough to manage it with more grace. The smell of cheese chews hidden in every corner to be tussled over whenever we got bored. The tables populated by a forest of strong legs and powerful arms that were always reaching for us—to feed us, to clean the blood from our muzzles, or simply to mark us. The surprised skittering at the end of one of our countless games of hide-and-stalk.

  Running, forever running.

  Because fragrance is as important as any visual detail for us, the Great North spent what it needed to on cedar wood, so it would smell like home. In the back, t
he little room that used to hold supplies for the cold frames is gone. But the kitchen will be expanded, the medic station too. I suppose that’s all good.

  Except for the addition of another window, John’s office—Evie’s office—will be the same though. I stand in the place where John’s creaky, oversize banker’s chair used to be. Stuck between two of the studs is a small cardboard box holding three blackened First Kill skulls and two white ones. Rabbits, all. I don’t know who made the two more recent ones. I barely know the names of any of the wolves younger than the 11th.

  “We will have the walls by next moon,” Celia says. “Roof too. You’ll see it when you come back.”

  When you come back. I feel almost sick at the thought of another moon spent Offland. And another and another, until when? Until I can no longer change except with the Iron Moon? Until I can no longer change at all?

  I rub the heel of my hand against my chest. “Something is happening to me,” I whisper. “Inside me, something is falling apart. I’m not sure how much longer I can—”

  “Table is beginning,” says a cool voice.

  Always the good little wolf, Celia bolts down the stairs, racing for the Meeting House, for this one time when we are all together and we all have words and opposable thumbs.

  Tiberius doesn’t run though. He looks at me, with his big arms crossed in front of his thick chest.

  “What are you staring at?” I spit out, glaring at him through my one functioning eye.

  “Why did you lose?”

  “Why did I lose? I lost because you’re a giant freak.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true. You had me, but you stopped. You stopped yourself,” he says.

  “You don’t know the first thing about me, Shifter. So don’t pretend you do.”

  He holds open the tarp and looks toward the Meeting House.

  “I do know one thing about you. Something that no one else here understands.” His voice is so soft, and despite myself, I strain to hear.

  “I know how it feels when your soul starts to die.”