by Maria Vale
But if I stay…
Then I am gambling that this Shifter and I are strong enough to fight for—and win—a full place in the Pack. It is a gamble, though, because if we can’t, both of us are exiled. He will be no worse off, but I will careen from bad decision to bad decision, ending up in the same damn puddle of blood and/or vomit as Ronan.
The enormous Shifter weaves in our midst. I run back and sniff at him. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he looks really strong, and with a little help, he should make it. He lifts his head, and for the first time, I see his face. He’s darker than John’s mate, Evie, but where her eyes are pure black, his are black shot through with shards of gold.
He whispers something that even my sensitive ears must strain to catch.
“Runt?” he murmurs. “I don’t want to die.” Then he collapses into the grass.
The Pack is already filtering out of the Clearing. Demos gives a curious sniff of the prone body and snarls. He swings his fat head, hitting my backside, telling me to get a move on.
Maybe if he hadn’t done that, I’d have crouched down and followed. This is my world, and the Pack is my life, but I haven’t put this much work into surviving only to spend the rest of my life obeying every snarky whim of a thuggish half-wit like Eudemos.
I nip at his ear, the universally understood signal—at least among Pack, it’s universally understood—to go fuck yourself. I shake out my back and straighten my tail and walk as tall as I can back to the Shifter. I lay my head across his shoulder.
John takes one look along his flank and starts to run. The Pack follows quickly until they are nothing but the occasional flicker of fur among the spruce.
Except for the low, slow plaintive cry of the loon on Clear Pond, it is silent. Then comes the reverberating howl signaling that John is home. The wolves stationed at the perimeter take up the howl.
“We are,” they say.
I’d cry if I could, but I can’t. I’d howl if I could, just to say Me too, but I can’t.
All I can do is nudge the huge mound collapsed in a damp hollow of the Clearing. Early fall nights in the Adirondacks are too cold for humans, especially lightly clothed, partially eviscerated ones. It takes a few nips to find a good purchase on his jacket, then I lock it between my jaws. I don’t like the plastic taste, but I pull anyway. In fits and starts, I move his inert bulk to a slight rise where it’s not so damp, but there’s no way that either the jacket or I are going to be able to make it much farther.
After pulling on the jacket to cover as much of his body as possible, I curl around him, giving him the warmth of my body.
The moon shines down on the Clearing. This is a place for a Pack, not for a single wolf on her own, and it feels exposed and huge and empty. Not to mention damp.
A coyote creeps closer, picked out by the moon. I jump up, straddling the body with my shoulders hunched and my fur bristling so I look larger. I growl in the way John would—or Tara or Evie or Solveig or any of dominant wolves would—and hope.
The coyote hesitates and then retreats. I settle back, covering more of this man’s big body with my smaller one. As I drop my head to his broad chest, a warm sigh ripples through my fur.
I wish the loon would shut up.
For more Maria Vale check out book one
in The Legend of All Wolves series
The Last Wolf
On sale now
Terms used in the Legend of All Wolves
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 farther along and become æcewulfs. There is no changing back.
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.
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, the hierarchy established at a Dæling may change over time.
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.
Gemyndestow: 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 relatively 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 often choose 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.
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 during which 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.
Acknowledgments
As this project has gone on, I find myself with more people to thank. People like Jeaniene Frost and Terry Spear and Amanda Bouchet, truly great writers who lent their enthusiasm to an unknown writer. Of course, I am enduringly grateful to the women of Sourcebooks—Susie Benton, Heather Hall, Laura Costello, and Beth Sochacki—who have always been kind and patient and there when I needed them. A special shout-out to Stefani Sloma, whose unflagging support for these books has left me speechless, though still capable of sending bullet point emails. To Dawn Adams, who threaded a camel through the eye of the needle and came up with the most perfect covers for the series. To my fantastic editor, Deb Werksman, who has been endlessly patient and encouraging. And, of course, to my perfect agent, Heather Jackson, who believed.
Thank you.
About the Author
Maria Vale is a logophile and a bibliovore and a worrier about the world. Trained as a medievalist, she tries to shoehorn the langu
age of Beowulf into things that don’t really need it. She currently lives in New York with her husband, two sons, and a long line of dead plants. No one will let her have a pet.
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