Chapter 17

All I need is a quick check of the sky to tell me I have only five days before the Iron Moon. Though there is, of course, an app for it.

In five days, Pack members who work or study in Vermont, New Hampshire, Downstate, or Canada will all come home, because no one is allowed to change Offland.

Everything that requires hands and voices must be done before sundown on Thursday. John rotates through a long list of plausible excuses he leaves on the outgoing message explaining why he is “unable to take your call at this time,” without saying anything about the difficulty of picking up a phone with claws and the impossibility of speaking.

Supplies are inventoried, and lists are made for the Iron Moon Table, when the moon is finished with us and the whole Pack is together and in skin and we are able to converse and conduct Pack business. Ti and I are repairing the roof on one of the dormitories for Offlanders who might need a night at home in their skins before or after the Iron Moon.

Since Ti doesn’t truly understand what it means to have a Pack or a territory, which I still find just so sad, I try to explain exactly what an Offlander is.

“Some Packs still rely on isolation to protect them. The Nunavut Pack does. Of course, the Siberian Taiga Pack, but who knows how much longer they’ll be able to do that? Ready for the lathing?” Ti holds out his hand as I pass along the thin strip of wood. “Our first Alpha insisted that we learn and adapt to human ways, so nearly half of our wolves live Offland at any given time.”

“Doing what?”

“Students. Others work to protect the Pack’s interests as fund managers. We have a whole bunch of lawyers.”

“I thought Victor was your lawyer,” Ti says through the nail clenched tight in the corner of his mouth.

“Victor’s our Deemer. He deals only with Pack law. The others work within the human legal system. They’re the ones who maintain the Trust that protects us. Well, mostly Elijah Sorensson, the 9th’s Alpha. He’s been in charge of it ever since I can remember. Can I have some nails?

“Ti?” He is crouched on one knee, staring into the forest. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. I’m fine. Here.” He passes me a box of nails. “How about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, I mean, have you ever lived Offland?”

“No.” I set the lathing carefully in place.

I know he’s looking at me.

“Have you ever been Offland?”

I hammer a little too hard, and the lathing splits.

“Silver. Have you ever been Offland?”

“The Homelands are big,” I say a little defensively. “And there’s lots to do…”

He jumps down from the roof before I can even get to the ladder.

“…here.”

I run after him, skipping every third step, trying to keep up. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He doesn’t say anything, just grips his stupid hammer tighter. He steps over the little stream that separates the dormitories, heading straight to Cabin One.

“Ti!” I hiss. “This is his home and Evie’s… Evie is very nervous around Shifters, and you can’t just walk in—and certainly not carrying this.” I grab the hammer, but Ti keeps going. My heels scrape long tracks in the cold, damp ground.

He doesn’t let go until he starts rapping on the door of the Alpha cabin. I let fly the hammer, and it hits the shallow water with a dull splash, just as Evie peers through the crack of the door. I lower my eyes.

“What do you want, Shifter?” asks Evie, lengthening the consonant blend so it sounds positively venomous. Shhhifter.

“I need to talk to John.”

Her mouth tightens. “Get away from my house,” she snaps and slams the door.

But before it closes, Ti pushes his work boot against the frame and keeps it open a tiny chink. “Can I ask… What have I ever done to you?”

“It’s not what you have done,” she spits out, a single hate-filled eye visible through the crack. “It’s what you will do. The others, they know about Shifters. But I’ve actually known them. Shifters are a lie from the moment they draw their first breath. And you… You’re worse than any of them. Pretending you’re human when it’s convenient. Pretending you’re Pack when it’s not. You can lie to the world. But the second I know you’re lying to us, I will tear your goddamn throat out.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that Evie’s nervous around Shifters. Maybe I should’ve been honest and told him she hates them.

“Evie?” John comes running. He walks up to his mate and whispers for a moment; she whispers back angrily. He shakes his head and then comes out, pulling the door closed behind him.

Maybe he saw us approach the cabin or heard Evie’s voice from the Great Hall. Whatever happened, John hadn’t bothered to put on his boots before he ran over. He sits heavily on the steps.

“You wanted something?”

“She’s never been Offland?” Ti asks.

“I told him not to come,” I blurt out.

“How about we try one at a time,” John says, peeling off muddy, gray ragg socks with burgundy heels.

“Silver has never been Offland?”

John looks at me, and I shrug. He shrugs and hangs his socks over the low railing. “Don’t think so. Pack go Offland when they’re needed.”

“So she hasn’t gone because she’s not needed?”

“Ti!” I whisper urgently and pull at his waistband. That is no way to talk to your Alpha.

John puts his hands on his knees and then stands, descending a single step so that he is face-to-face with Ti, their noses almost touching. “Before you judge us, Tiberius, let me put this in terms a human would understand. Silver is my brother’s child. My brother’s only child. I loved my brother. He lived a great Alpha. And he died a great Alpha, dragging this”—here he points to me—“tiny, deformed, frozen thing halfway across the Great North with a hole in his chest.

“I brought her home so she could be marked by her Pack and die on her land. But she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t die. And in defiance of every law and tradition, I kept that broken-up pup in my pocket. I fed her with a dropper until her eyes opened. Three wolves fought me, because they took it as a sign of weakness in a new Alpha. And we cannot coddle weakness.”

“But if she’s your brother’s only child, don’t you owe her something more than this?”

“You really are a human, aren’t you? That’s all they ever think about: What they’re owed. Their rights. Never about what they owe. Never their responsibilities.”

Lana, a tiny nursling who lives next door, has heard the commotion and stumbles toward John, looking for comfort. He scoops her up, and she rolls over onto her back, her head twisted to the side, staring at us from the protection of the Alpha’s arms. Next year, she will leave her family’s cabin and go to the children’s quarters so she can be with her echelon. Pack ties must always take precedence over family.

“Silver is as good a wolf as any in this Pack,” John says, scratching behind Lana’s ear. “But going Offland requires her to be a convincing human.”

“I can do it, John. Ti’s been very helpful, and I’ll even do that online human behaviors course Leonora’s always—”

“A man notices a wolf sitting next to him at the movie theater,” John interrupts.

“Ouu. I love this one.”

“I know you do, Silver. But maybe Tiberius doesn’t know it? So…a man sees a wolf sitting next to him at the movie theater. And the guy says to the wolf, ‘What are you doing here?’ The wolf shrugs and says, ‘Well, I liked the book.’”

And I laugh and laugh and laugh.

John looks at Ti before gently pushing my upper lip down to cover my teeth, the ones that are too long and too sharp and too feral ever to be mistaken for human.

The screen door bangs in the cabin next door, and Paula calls for her daughter. John waves to her, pointing to Lana.

“I wish I could hold on to them all,” he says, stroking the pup nestled in his arms. “But you’re right, I can’t. Silver, tell Tara that you two will be making the town run on Wednesday. She’ll get you an ID and give you the list. Then, Silver, come see me in my office. There are some things I need to go over. And, Tiberius, this is on you. If something happens to her, know that we will hunt you down.”

Lana squirms as John passes her to Paula. The retreating pup stares at him over her mother’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” says Ti. “If something happens to her, you won’t have to hunt me down, because I will already be dead.”

* * *

I tell Tara that I’m going into the City, and she says Plattsburgh isn’t the City. I tell Gran Tito that I’m going into the City, and he says Plattsburgh isn’t the City. Even Leelee has the gall to tell me that Plattsburgh isn’t the City.

“Can you drive a stick?” Tara asks Ti, her hand floating over a shallow box of keys.

He motions with one hand, one eyebrow up, which must mean something to Tara, because she throws him a key. “The red Wrangler.”

John and Leonora both gave me careful instructions about dealing with humans, trying to explain the balance between interacting with the community and keeping it at arm’s length.

I check three times to make sure I have the list and the cash and the prepaid card and the map of Plattsburgh. I plot out the places we need to go: the post office, the Corner-Stone bookstore, the True Value, Hannaford. We also have to go to Tails of the Adirondacks, because the pups have hidden all the cheese chews and we need more peanut butter toothpaste. Last minute, Tara tells me to get another gallon of Skunk-Off. “I don’t know what the pups are up to, but we’re going through it like water, and the skunks won’t be dormant for two more moons.”

Tara says if we need lunch, we should go to Himalaya, because the other restaurants serve mostly carrion.

In the Wrangler, Ti puts on a leash. This is a man who tore his throat raw trying to get out of a collar, but he voluntarily puts on a leash.

“You have to put yours on too,” he says.

As if.

“It’s the law, Sil.”

“I don’t care what any stupid leash law says, I’m not wearing it.”

“It’s not a leash; it’s a seat belt. Protects you from accidents, and if you don’t wear it, we will be stopped.”

“Oh.”

“That’s right, ‘oh.’” He starts jostling down the rough road leading from the Great Hall. At the gate, I tell Gabriel that we’re going to the City.

“So I’ve heard. Yay, Plattsburgh,” he says and gives me a fist bump.

It’s a slow trip down our rough access road. We wobble and bump, and stones spit against the bottom of the car.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were John’s niece?”

“It’s not like it means anything. All that matters is Pack.”

At the end of the road, we make a right-hand turn and we’re on the human road, made entirely of crushed stone glued tightly together. It’s very smooth and Ti starts going faster and when I push the button, the window comes down and a thousand scents flood my nose and the wind whips my hair every which way.

“How did your parents die, exactly?”

“No one knows exactly,” I say to the wind. “They stopped on the road, probably something to do with the pregnancy because they had changed. Someone with a gun saw them. My mother was shot in the head and died instantly. My father was shot in the chest. He managed to rip me and my two brothers out and then ran. He was dead when the hunters caught up with him, and by the time the Pack tracked us, my brothers were dead too.”

We turn onto another road that has space for two cars going in opposite directions, and Ti goes even faster.

“You told me your parents passed. That is not passing.”

“It is if you’re a wolf.”

I love the wind on my face and the smells that keep coming faster and faster. Mink and bog and granite and cedar and roadkillandbalsamandporcupineandhoneyfungusand—

“Wildfire,” he says, reaching across to my hand, “keep your head in the car.”

And I wrap my fingers in his and smile because my lungs are full, my heart is full, and the wind is beating against my skin, and I’m going so much faster than I could ever run.