Forever Wolf

by Maria Vale

  Victor looks at my hand sinking into the softness under his sternum and touching the offending organ. His skin suddenly grays.

  “Your Alpha is waiting for you, Deemer.”

  He turns on his heel and catches his toe on a loose floorboard that smells of lavender and turpentine. Then he races after the rest of the Pack.

  It is not something that I am proud of, but I know my reputation. I know what they say about me.

  That I have eaten my own kind.

  They are, of course, right.

  Chapter 33

  The Pack has always gathered together, waiting for the waning evening light of this last day to give way to the inexorable pull of the moon’s iron law. We’d sit together on the snow or ice or mud or rough grass of the land between the stairs of the Great Hall and the edge of Home Pond.

  But that was when the thing we had to fear most was a coyote or bobcat coming upon us helpless in mid-change and eating us. There was strength in numbers then and in a well-marked territory.

  Having all of us naked and immobilized in the same spot when the Shifters came would be, as the humans put it in a particularly inept phrase, “like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Evie has emptied the barrel. The echelons are scattered throughout the High Pines, so that even if the Shifters with their superior senses can find some, they will not find us all before the change is over and the rest can either escape or fight.

  The Grans, 2nd, 3rd, and 14th have taken the pups as deep into the wild as our lands allow. Far from roads or what passes as paths into the harsh, trackless, wolf-welcoming dark of the forests.

  The 9th and the 12th and the 7th—Evie’s own echelon—gather in small groups hidden among the trees near but not on the access road.

  The other echelons—the ones that aren’t as strong or that she simply doesn’t trust to stand watch over our entrances or our pups—are scattered throughout the interior of Homelands.

  I help distribute the 12th along the near edge of the access road. Lorcan will take up position closer to the human road. I remind him to take the rubber band from his hair.

  The 9th is on the far side. The 7th at the top of the road, so that if anyone should be able to get past us, there is one more barrier to cross before getting to the gate across the road that marks the true beginning of Homelands.

  By tradition, the Alpha closes the door of the Great Hall, marking the official beginning of the Iron Moon. This time, Evie double-checks the new heavy chain locking that gate.

  “Ēadig wáþ.” She says the traditional blessing, hoping—praying, really—that her wolves have three good days of wandering and hunting.

  “And be yourself not hunted” comes the subdued answer.

  Then she returns to the bend in the road, overshadowed on the Offland side by the spindly fire tower where Thea lies armed and waiting. On the inside of the curve, Victor, Tara, and I all sit, naked, our clothes in neat piles in the Great Hall. We sit, because once the Iron Moon begins her pull on pelvis and phalanges, there is no standing upright, and it is not worth the potential for injury. I have a place with good sight lines; Evie sits nearby. We both strain our senses for any sound that doesn’t belong.

  Tiberius stands in the middle of the road, his hands buried in the deep front pocket of his dark jacket. He is already a shadow, and as the sun sets, he will dissolve into black, leaving nothing but the two luminous green eyes of this deadly bulwark between the human world and the wild he loves.

  The hope is that the Shifter and the human, the two who can keep their fingers even after sunset, can delay any invaders into the Great North long enough for those of us who must be wild to finish our change. Then the three echelons arrayed along the length of the access road will kill as many as we can, giving the other echelons time to run.

  I keep pressing through my hair at the tooth marks at my neck. Alys us. Alys hine. Save us. Save him. I pray—as I did when I was a pup and believed that it might actually help—that if the Shifters come, they cannot smell cold. That if they come, he knows not to wait for me, because if they’ve made it as far as Westdæl, I am already dead.

  Then it starts. The change of the Iron Moon is not like the changes I trigger myself. It doesn’t start with one part of my body and move from there. Instead, it starts with the increasingly urgent rush of my blood, the moon pulling at it like the currents. Now, I lie down in a tiny, clear space, my arms and legs crooked in front of me, so that as soon as the change is over, nothing will be awkwardly positioned and I’ll be able to move fast.

  Dark swirls surrounded by white start to float across my eyes. My eyes and nose start to feel clotted and heavy, and soon all I see is a snowstorm of pale floaters and all I hear is the dull roar of the inside of my skull and all I smell is my own bone and blood as my face rearranges itself.

  My pelvis and legs and chest narrow; muscles ripple as they shorten and lengthen. Finally, I am awash in the warmth of my powerful heart and thickening coat and I am almost done and I pray to the moon to let me not be shot before I have killed at least one Shifter.

  I stumble to my feet, searching with my still-compromised senses for any distant gunfire or smell of cordite.

  It’s silent. Not silent, but forest quiet, the sound of peace. Only the fast, metallic creak of a barn owl makes me jump.

  Evie and other larger wolves are still changing, so I lope toward Tiberius.

  “Nothing,” he says, staring into the moonlit dark of the road that leads Offland.

  It won’t be long before even the largest wolves will be changed and Evie will decide whether to call the all clear.

  A little whimper of relief steams from my nose, but just as it does, I know it was too soon. Tiberius stiffens, so he has heard it too. From far away, where our rough access road meets the smooth human pavement, comes the grind of rubber turning onto dirt and rock. Tiberius and I look at each other. I back into the forest, to Evie. Maybe Victor heard the sound of wheels on rock because he, too, is circling around our Alpha’s changing body.

  Evie tries to get to her paws with muscles that won’t obey yet. I stand at her side while she shakes out her enormous body. She lurches against me but doesn’t fall.

  The cars move slowly closer. Elijah is the only wolf large enough to still be changing, but Tara is across the road and is more than capable of leading the 9th.

  Now Evie lifts paw after silent paw, her shoulders rolling under her black fur like waves as she creeps through rough, dead stalks that come summer will be primrose and fireweed and Queen Anne’s lace and yarrow, clinging to the sunlit border of this road.

  Wolves on either side silently follow her lead, all finding spots deep enough to remain hidden, but with nothing blocking an attack.

  Evie’s shoulders and legs are bent tight, her lips drawn back over her teeth, her ears cocked, listening.

  Rocks crunch under the wheels of the two huge black SUVs until their engines sigh to a stop. Inside the tinted windows of the lead car, a click sounds, followed by the slick whoosh of a seat belt. I can smell nothing through the overwhelming assault of plastic and paint and solvents until the door opens and a foot reaches for the ground.

  Tiberius shifts his right hand just slightly inside his pocket.

  The driver jumps down, and now we can smell him. Carrion, steel, the sweet oleaginous smell of alcohol. And somewhere underneath, the scent of ferns on damp wood.

  His hair is the color of Lorcan’s, but his skin is ruddy, crisscrossed with tiny blood vessels.

  “Tiberius,” the Shifter says. The wind changes, and a wolf on the other side who’d moved too close to the road steps back into the brush, licking her nose, trying to get rid of the smell.

  “Lucian,” Tiberius says. “What are you doing here?” He doesn’t say it as if he’s actually curious. There’s no rise at the end. Instead, it’s a statement that this man has no right
to be on our land.

  Lucian hooks his thumb in his belt loop, trapping the fabric of his coat behind him, showing us all his holster, if not his gun. The passenger door opens with a thud and another thump as one more Shifter jumps to the ground. He starts forward, but Lucian lifts his hand. He stops, but I still recognize the gaunt Shifter with the flecks of gray in his beard and the khaki skin and the smell of reeds on water’s edge.

  “Constantine,” Tiberius says without taking his eyes from Lucian. He must know him by smell. Constantine nods in response. Lucian takes a step forward.

  “That’s close enough.” Tiberius lifts his palm, the one that is bent and deformed by the dog spike his father used to fasten him to a wooden post.

  “Give us some credit,” Lucian says, pulling a glove from his pocket. “If we had come to kill you, we would not have waited this long.”

  “I give you credit for nothing. What do you want?”

  Lucian smooths the glove over his left hand, pulling it tight over each finger before wiggling them.

  “Your father has been trying for weeks to talk with the Alpha of the Great North. She has been ignoring him.”

  “He killed five of her wolves, including her mate. She doesn’t owe him an audience.”

  Lucian closes his eyes and throws back his head, breathing in deeply, his mouth just slightly ajar, then turns toward the tangle of trees and underbrush where Evie is crouched and ready.

  “Evie Kitwana,” he says, scanning the brush. “I know you’re listening.”

  Evie doesn’t move.

  “Your idyll is at an end. The Great North has been able to protect this land for so long because, to be frank, nobody else much wanted it. August has made sure that very powerful people have been alerted to its worth. Its resources. Its very attractive position between those who produce energy and those who consume it. The humans who come now are backed by the will of nations, and when they tear through your territory, there won’t be anything you can do about it. Sadly, there is nowhere left for you to go.”

  Lucian holds on to the lapel of his jacket. “Having set this in motion, August is the only one who knows how to stop it.”

  A breeze rolls down from the north, ruffling Evie’s coat.

  “This isn’t about money,” Tiberius says.

  “Nothing as crass as that.”

  Lucian’s hand moves toward the inside of his jacket, and Tiberius stiffens.

  “May I? I only have the gun in the holster. This is just a photograph.”

  Tiberius doesn’t respond and doesn’t relax.

  The man pulls out a small rectangle and shows it first to Tiberius, then stiff-armed, he turns so that wolves on either side of the access road can see a picture taken overhead with a long-range lens. A picture of John, Sigeburg, Solveig, and Theo—Tiberius and Silver’s young—tussling over an antler.

  By the time he has turned full circle, Tiberius’s gun is pointed steadily at the center of Lucian’s forehead.

  “It’s not a threat, Tiberius. It’s simply a picture taken for a proud grandfather.”

  Tiberius’s only response is the almost silent snick made by the gun’s safety.

  “August wants this back.” He slips the photograph in his breast pocket and pats it. “None of us believes it is a coincidence that the only successful Shifter births of the past half century were with Pack.”

  “This was not a Shifter birth. I was not a Shifter birth. I was forced to be a Shifter when my father chained me to a fence every moon for—”

  “You were trained. We were all the same. Once. But we fought against the worst, most bestial part of our natures. August believes he can train your—”

  “No.”

  “Can you put that down?” Lucian nods toward the gun, still pointed at his head. “I wouldn’t want you to get nervous and make a mistake.”

  “I don’t get nervous,” Tiberius says. “And I don’t make mistakes. Not with guns.”

  Lucian turns once again toward Evie. “Alpha? What August is proposing is that we join. We will protect you and protect your land for this generation. You must see that there is no room for the wild anymore. We are offering to free your children from this endless cycle of vulnerability. All we ask in return is that you join us and save us from the slow extinction of our breed.

  “It is a fair deal, Alpha. A future for a future.”

  I follow the huge black wolf with dark eyes as she steps out of the shadows. Elijah and Tara emerge from the other side as well.

  Lucian undoes the snap of his holster.

  A crack splits the air followed by an explosion of mud that covers Lucian’s lower legs.

  “I would take my hand away from the gun, if I were you.”

  Muddy water creeps into the depression in front of Lucian’s toe as he turns his head, trying to locate the scent of the sniper watching from the heights.

  “The Great North already has its defenders,” Tiberius says.

  “Ms. Kitwana,” he says. “Mr. Leveraux will call you Tuesday so that you can talk. He would truly prefer an arrangement that was mutually agreeable.”

  “Prefer,” Tiberius spits out. “But if the Pack says no?”

  “This is life or death, Tiberius. You know your father; what do you think?”

  Lucian signals to Constantine to get back into the SUV. The passenger door closes with a dull thud.

  “Tuesday,” Lucian repeats to Evie. “Late morning. Mr. Leveraux does not like to wake up early.”

  Then there is another dull thud, and the big, black, blind cars start to back up. Evie follows them, her muscles twitching with every step. I wonder if she is feeling what I am, the futility of our claws and our fangs and our strength of heart against metal and fire.

  And I follow Evie all the way from the rough stone to the smooth crushed pavement Offland. Once they are really and truly gone, Tara howls the all clear. Few of the Pack know what has happened. Some saw the lights of the SUVs bobbing along the rough access road. More heard the single gunshot. There is a lot to say, but no words to say it with, so the Pack will do what they always do: wander and hunt.

  Evie sits erect and silent among the trees girding the road, and I sit next to her. Aside from a slight turn of her head, she does not acknowledge me as we wait there deep into the night.

  Chapter 34

  When I finally get to them, the wolves of the 12th are anxious. They don’t like change. In skin, they were willing to follow Lorcan and Victor in a show of petty defiance. Now that they are wild, they stand with their tails drawn in, their ears circling, waiting for any other sound. A few run toward me, sniffing my face, hoping that something on my muzzle brings comfort or at the very least news.

  I have neither, but what they do find is the scent of a failing buck near the waters at the easternmost border of Homelands. I run around quickly, spreading the scent. They are hungry and nervous, and I spend too much time growling and nipping at their flanks, until the 12th finally concentrates enough to be able to hunt.

  I move them along quickly, snapping at stragglers, because once I have done what I must do, I will leave them to Lorcan and George, our Beta mate.

  The 12th has no trouble hunting down the old buck, but I have no heart for it. The sound of tearing hide and the impatient growls mix with the smell of blood and the damp heat of fresh kill, but I’m not hungry. I stare blankly as the consciousness of a lifetime fades in big, round black eyes that reflect the silhouette of the moon over Westdæl.

  Evie is running everywhere, checking on her Pack, reassuring those made nervous by the sounds of cars and guns if they were close enough to hear, or by the change in routine if they weren’t. Victor has been too. I know because when he lopes in to take his place at our kill, I smell the scents of many wolves on his muzzle. I watch as the 12th backs away, letting him eat his fill.

  When he i
s finished, his long tongue swirls around his blood-spattered mouth before striding over to Lorcan. He props one paw on Lorcan’s head and marks him before turning to me. I can feel the 12th watch. They are nervous. They want cohesion and consensus.

  They want to know that their dominants are agreed. But I don’t agree. Victor is not like Evie, who has been helping with hunts, reassuring, disciplining, and marking. Victor is like the human politicians Leonora once described. The ones who kiss babies and pat backs and hug warmly in order to gain power.

  Victor turns to mark me, and I lunge. It is a feint; there is no actual menace in it, just a line he knows better than to try to cross.

  Licking his muzzle, he kicks the dirt with his hind paw, a subtle slight, before moving on to the other members of the echelon. One after another, wolves I have grown up with but have never truly known line up to take his mark.

  With no more than a bend of my head to acknowledge my Alpha, I leap up, twisting in the air, and run. Jumping over moss-covered logs and lichen-covered rocks, I stumble into the soft new mud, the thin layer of ice giving with a delicate break.

  Biting the ice lodged between my pads, I glance back up to the 12th. Victor stands impatiently in front of Arthur, waiting for him to offer his muzzle. Just as I am about to return to my paw, something entirely unexpected happens: Arthur—Arthur—carefully and deliberately turns around, presenting the Deemer with haunches and tail. He has no rank in the hierarchy, so it is an empty gesture.

  At least I thought it was an empty gesture, until others of my echelon move away. Not all, by any means. Most—either from loyalty to Lorcan or to Victor or by habit—still receive his mark. But those who were uncertain have been given courage by a nidling who is braver than they are.