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, the 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.”