Forever Wolf

by Maria Vale

  “I have to get home. There are hunters heading to Homelands. They—” And my voice breaks.

  “Stop, Varya, just one minute. Let me…for one minute.” He pops my seat belt. “I need to hold you. I know you won’t do it for yourself, but do it for me.”

  I do need it. I need this minute of clinging to him. My frantic hands slide under his shirt to remember the coolness of his skin. My body presses against his, remembering the stretch and sinew. The tiny bead of his nipple. My eyes run over every pale inch and sharp angle of his face, reassuring myself that he is really here. That I haven’t lost him. I wipe away the flakes of dried blood. He holds my head so tight that I feel his fingers against my skull. He takes me so close, cold lips to cold lips, hair tangled together, hearts racing at the same frantic, consuming pace.

  Yours.

  Mine.

  Ours.

  Sigeburg pulls herself against my hip and looks anxiously from Eyulf to me. I kiss him one more time and tuck Sigeburg into the back.

  Then I wipe my face on my hem, wrap my hands around the steering wheel, check the rearview mirror, and do my best to smile at the worried pups. Make sure Eyulf has his seat belt on. Then I look into the side mirror and pull back out.

  “You really are a terrible liar, Varya. I could read your decision on your face the moment you came back from the Pack. I could see that you were afraid that what had happened before might happen again. I knew even as I was arguing against it that you would sacrifice anything—yourself, me—to stop it. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the future is a void that is filled by the present. And since you are all of my present, it wasn’t possible that you wouldn’t be my future too. You did what you thought you had to and left. I did what I knew I had to and stayed.”

  I don’t have the strength to answer. I barely have the strength to lift my hand to my cheek. To bring the fur on my hand that came off when I rubbed his back. With one hand on the steering wheel, I hold it to my nose and breathe in for a long time, rubbing it against my cheek and behind my jaw.

  “I had some of your fur. I kept it in my pocket. It’s…It’s in my cabin.” I cough, trying to disguise how hard it’s become to talk. “I couldn’t go through that again. It wasn’t a choice between you and Lorcan. I couldn’t even look at him when I got back.”

  “I know. I saw you. Take eleven north,” he says. “Next exit.”

  Eyulf sighs softly, his eyes half opened. He is exhausted, and any questions about how he found me will have to wait. As soon as we’re on the A-20, his eyes close, his breath comes slower.

  Flicking on the turn signal, I look in the rearview mirror, catching sight of the pups. They may have been born to Silver and Tiberius, but they are mine now. Ours.

  “By the way…I left a body,” Eyulf mumbles sleepily. “Behind the Loblaws.”

  Chapter 46

  I try to hit the sweet spot between sticking to the speed limit like a drug runner and flouting it completely like someone with so much money that they’ll pay anything local law enforcement asks just to get back on the road.

  Especially now that I have the dogcatcher’s body in the back.

  Most of it anyway. It was not a good kill, but we rushed to gather what we could find so humans wouldn’t use this death as an excuse to hunt anything with pointed teeth.

  “Sigeburg! Put that down!”

  I did my best to wrap the scraps neatly in the blue tarp from the back of the dogcatcher’s truck, but the pups keep scratching it open.

  In the rearview mirror, Sigeburg drops the man’s finger and sticks out her tongue.

  “I told you it was nasty.”

  The pups finally fall back asleep, but whenever I look back, Sigeburg opens one eye and jumps up, ready to fight.

  “Slæpe, min herewosa weard,” I whisper. Sleep, my fierce guard.

  She may be too young for words, but she understands by my voice, by the brief downward drift of my eyelids that there is no threat. Circling around her littermates, she settles in and, with a sigh, closes her eyes.

  I’ve told Eyulf about the hunt, and three times I’ve tried Homelands. Three times, I’ve gotten Evie’s message about a gas leak requiring the evacuation of the Great North’s offices until Thursday. I left a message, but I doubt she’ll check it. Once they are this far into preparations for the Iron Moon, they rarely do. By now, their focus has shifted completely from the world of men.

  Still, I told her I had escaped, that August was dead, that I had the pups, that she needed to disperse the Pack for the change.

  I also told her not to let Victor out of her sight.

  With each mile I come closer to Homelands, my left hand clutches the steering wheel tighter. It’s white-knuckled now, and the metal underneath the rubber is bent.

  August died. But he was a predator, doing what predators do.

  Victor is something else. I knew he had betrayed us the moment I regained consciousness in the back of the dogcatcher’s van. I knew what had happened. I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe it was coincidence that Victor commanded Nils and Nyala to heed the call to law, even though they were too young.

  “I was told to get a gray dog with puppies in front of the big house.”

  But I do believe in fate. Maybe it was fate that decided to substitute me—Varya Wearg, Varya the Bloodthirsty, Varya the Outlaw—for Silver the Runt. Who knows.

  Not long ago, I thought that fear was cold and that only the heat of anger could burn through it. Now I know that the heat of love works just as well. I love Homelands and these pups and the whole imperfect motley of the Great North Pack. They aren’t spoiled. They don’t ask that life be easy.

  All they ask is for a chance to keep fighting.

  I love my wolf too. His tangled pale-blond hair. His mouth slightly open. His leg has been twitching under my hand the whole way. As if he’s been running so long, his muscles don’t know when to stop.

  I pull over on the shoulder.

  “Eyulf?” He startles, groggy-eyed, straining at the seat belt. “We’re home.”

  This is human land, but beyond it is the slope leading up to Homelands, and beyond that is the little cave that looks like a dark eye in the rocky face of Westdæl.

  “As soon as I can, I’ll come find you. But if I can’t…”

  “That is such a shitty smile.” He unbuckles the seat belt and turns to me, his hand slipping behind my head, holding me tight against his cool lips. I open my mouth, just to suck in the last taste of cold, and my breath hitches in my chest.

  * * *

  The pups already know they’re home. They knew as soon as Eyulf opened the door to the damp early spring air that brought with it the scents of pine and birch and water running across moss and unfurling cinnamon ferns and, even though we were not yet at Homelands, the warming smell of Pack. They immediately started barking excitedly. I leave the window open so I can follow the chain of wolf calls as one by one the Pack announces our return.

  At the rusted sign saying PRIVATE DRIVE, I pull too hard on the steering wheel, almost heading into the deep gutter on the side of the access road. With a loud thump, I regain the rough road. Through the woods that close in on either side, I catch glimpses of fur from wolves clinging to their wild for the last few minutes before we must change so that the Iron Moon won’t force the matter.

  A series of sharp, excited howls announce the coming of the Alpha.

  The new fence is up, and the gate is locked as it always is now, but as I skid out of the last curve toward home, Evie runs over downed wood and through sodden branches. The pups begin scratching at the door, and Sigeburg jumps up front and onto my lap, looking through the open window, her skinny tail wagging furiously.

  She throws back her head and orrrooos.

  Evie vaults across the last few feet and takes Sigeburg from me, desperately checkin
g her and marking. Then she opens the back door of the car for all the wolves who have no thumbs but are no less desperate to see our pups. One after another they leap in. Enormous and strong and gentle, they lick and cuddle and kiss the pups in a giant writhing ball of fur that keeps getting bigger until Silver comes, slower on two legs but just as fierce. She throws herself into the middle of the wolves, wrapping herself around her pups, smelling them, rubbing her face desperately over the foreign scents, all the while making small whimpering sounds deep in her chest.

  “Henry, call Tiberius,” Evie yells. “Tell him we have them and to get home as soon as he can.”

  I have barely managed to unwrap my hand from the steering wheel when I feel Evie’s cheek against mine and lean against her, breathing in all the complex scents of Homelands and of its inhabitants, all concentrated in the wondrous fragrance of her hair and skin, and for a moment, I relax into the primordial comfort of my Alpha.

  “Where is Victor?” I whisper against her cheek.

  “Victor?” She starts back confused. “I’m sure he’s coming. Why?”

  The tight, elegant curl of fiddleheads gathers around the Pack’s feet. The yellow, green, and peach shoots of the red maple leaves frame their heads. The thaw taking root. Pack who are in skin emerge from the woods. Branches that would have broken around the careless big bodies during the winter now bend. In the distance, through a slight gap, I catch sight of the wolf I once called Deemer.

  “Victor Karolsson,” I scream as I leap down. “I do not call you Deemer.”

  “Shielder,” Evie says in a voice between warning and curiosity.

  The embers inside haven’t been embers since they erupted into flames days ago. “I do not acknowledge the protections of our law.” My shoulders curve forward. “I do not acknowledge your right to a challenge during the Iron Moon.” And when I walk toward him, I feel my hips moving with that familiar predatory roll.

  “I do not acknowledge your right to live.”

  “Shielder!” Evie snaps. This time, she takes hold of my arm, holding tighter when my lips draw back in a snarl over my flat teeth.

  “Where, Victor, is the skull of the rabbit that Nils brought to the Alpha? Where is the skull of the squirrel that Nyala brought her?”

  “They’re still nurslings,” Evie says. “They haven’t made their first kills.”

  “Which means they are too young to be called to the law, but you, Victor, insisted that they come with you, leaving Silver and her pups alone. On the porch of the big house. That’s what the human was told. That he should get ‘the gray dog and the puppies on the porch of the big house.’”

  Evie snarls but holds me tighter, her own fury growing as her grip hardens on my arms.

  In my head, my voice echoes louder. “You know that humans are coming this moon to kill us. Kill our strongest. You were told to hide, so that when it was over and the Pack was small and afraid and leaderless, you could hand it over to August Leveraux.”

  “Victor?” Now Evie’s voice slices through the air like ice.

  “We were offered a chance at safety. You,” he yells at Evie, “wanted to throw that away.”

  “We decided,” she snaps, “in the way Pack have made important decisions for centuries. In accordance with the law that you are sworn to safeguard.”

  “By one stone. I refuse to lose this Pack by one stone. August Leveraux—”

  “Is dead. I put a piece of metal through his neck, and I made sure that the light of his eyes died. When the Iron Moon is over, no Shifter will be coming to install you as Alpha. All you have done is sell the Great North as trophies to the westends.”

  I lunge for him, but Evie’s arms are like iron around me. “Shielder,” she commands in that firm Alpha voice. “Your Alpha would not have you kill him. If you do, I have no choice but to kill you. Don’t make me do that. If August Leveraux is dead, Victor cannot betray us further. We must have at least the appearance of law, now more than ever. After the moon, we will cast our stones, and the Thing will decide if he has broken faith with the Pack. If he has, then there will be a Slitung and we will fight, you and I, over who gets to make the first tear.”

  Victor’s smile is a half smile. A knowing smile. He believes that all he has to do is survive the Iron Moon in whatever hiding place he has set up, somewhere the humans won’t find him. Even without August Leveraux, humans have three days to hunt us. I doubt by the end there will be anyone left who is strong enough to lead the Pack. I struggle against my Alpha’s steely grip.

  The Alphas who had gathered behind him—Esme of the 13th, Teresa of the 11th, Poul of the 10th, and Lorcan—stand away from him now. Lorcan looks shell-shocked, his mouth part open, his hair half in the little rubber band.

  “How could you?” he whispers.

  “I did,” says Victor coldly, “what I have always done. What I deemed right for our Pack.” He turns on his heel, his head high, waving dismissively at someone I can’t see, but then jerks to a stop. He finally moves again, staggering back, his hand to his sternum, his mouth and eyes open wide.

  A bright-red stain spreads over his bright-white shirt. Victor stares at Evie, shocked. His hand slides helplessly from the blunt, blood-soaked blade sticking out of his chest.

  Then he lurches and falls to his knees, and Arthur, the least of all wolves, kneels in the mud beside him, waiting for him to collapse before pulling the butter knife from Victor’s heart.

  In the stunned silence that follows, the only sound is that of Victor’s gurgling final breaths.

  “I may be only a nidling,” Arthur snarls at Victor’s clouding eyes. “But I love my Pack as much as any wolf.”

  Evie’s arms drop to her sides, and I run to Arthur, tripping over Victor’s still-dying body to get to him. Arthur stares stunned at his hands, so when I lift his chin, I make sure that he focuses on me and understands that by marking him, I am not only giving him my reassurance, but also taking responsibility. Victor was dead one way or the other. I had already decided that. So if there is a price to be paid, I will pay it.

  Evie looks around her Pack. All of them—the ones who followed her and the ones who didn’t—are uncertain and worried, waiting for a decision. She pulls herself up, straight and strong, and calls to Silver, who has been watching from a distance, surrounded by huge, naked Pack anxious to mark her pups over and over, blotting out the lingering stench of steel and subjugation and replacing it with the smell of belonging.

  “Quicksilver Nilsdottir,” Evie says, her voice low and carrying and dominant, like the deep core of a Pack howl. “Your Alpha will have you as Deemer of the Great North.”

  Chapter 47

  There is a tense silence. Quicksilver is young. A runt. Mated to a Shifter. Hobbled when she is wild by a useless leg. But she is also strong of marrow, saturated in our stories, and wilder than any of us. She knows us. She knows that a moment like this requires decisiveness.

  “Yes, Alpha,” she says, jumping to her feet.

  “As this”—Evie waves her hand toward Victor’s body, Arthur, and me—“is a matter of law, I leave it to you, Deemer.” And with that, she strides off, barking instructions to the Pack to prepare for the hunters that are coming.

  Silver licks the tip of one of her sharp canines. “The murder of one Pack by another Pack is punished by death,” she says.

  “It was my decision, Deemer, and I am willing to take any punishment. I only ask that we wait until after the Iron Moon.”

  “I wasn’t finished, Shielder,” she says. “Victor was the one who determined that Arthur had no position in the hierarchy. ‘A nidling,’ I think he said, ‘is not a place. It is the lack of a place.’ Wolves cannot be denied the rights of the Pack and left only with the responsibilities. After the Iron Moon, Arthur Graysson will be clawed. That is my decision.”

  There is a deep intake of breath, both I think because he will n
ot die and because the Great North hasn’t had a clawing in two hundred years.

  “When the time comes, I will carry it out. After, Arthur will not be comforted by any Pack, so he will know the pain and bear the marks. But”—Silver looks hard at Lorcan—“once he has healed, he returns to his echelon and his Pack as a full member. The Great North is done with nidlings.”

  Lorcan lowers his head to Silver, giving her the respect due his Deemer. As he turns away, he kicks dirt on Victor’s body.

  I feel for Arthur, holding his blood-soaked hand to his still smooth-skinned belly. I know the pain of being clawed, of needing comfort and finding none. But Arthur catches my eye and jerks upright, hands fisted to the side. “I will have the same marks you do, Shielder. And I will be proud to wear them.”

  He lowers his eyes to his Deemer, and with that, it is over. Everyone is thinking only of how to protect this sacred place now.

  When two wolves pass by, dragging the blue tarp with the remains of the dogcatcher arranged down the center, Arthur takes hold of Victor’s belt and wrist and unceremoniously dumps him on top. He takes a corner of the tarp and helps pull it toward the spruce flats and the coyotes, who have flourished because we are here, but who will also be collateral damage when the humans come hunting.

  My hand drops from my hip where my fingers had been toying with the tail end of the scars that were supposed to mark me forever as an outcast but didn’t because that is the strength of the Great North. The Beloved North who took me in and made me their own.

  Elijah slides down the hill toward the access road, followed closely by Thea. With bent heads, they listen carefully to Evie. As soon as she is finished, Elijah runs toward the Great Hall. Thea hitches her canvas gun case higher over her shoulder and talks to several wolves. Unlike Pack, she doesn’t understand that you don’t gather dominants and subordinates together and address them as though they are the same. But when she points to the Shifter car, the wolves unhitch the brake and roll it down the road.