Chapter 22

Evie’s been in John’s office for a long time. I saw her, her rigid back toward the doorway, when I brought out one of the wood trenchers filled with breads for the Iron Moon Table. When I squeeze my way past my Packmates bringing out jams and butter and cream and cheeses and muffins and fruits and eggs, she’s still in there. John catches my eye and closes the door.

“Eat up,” I tell Ti. “Once John starts in with Pack business, we’ll have to leave.”

It seems like only a few minutes have passed when John stands. That’s enough to bring all the extraneous clattering and chatting to an end.

“In our laws are we protected,” he says solemnly.

“And in lawlessness are we destroyed,” I murmur. I grab one more cranberry pecan roll and signal Ti that it’s time for us to leave.

“Silver? Tiberius? Not quite yet.” John turns to the rest of the Pack. “Let’s deal with the status of our table guests first. Are there any for-speakers?”

In the Old Tongue, a fore-spreca, a for-speaker, is an advocate. There’s a lot of curious looking around, but no one is willing to speak on our behalf. John nods at me, signaling that we should leave. We have two more Iron Moons to go, so I’m not surprised that no one jumps right in.

Ti is still straddling the bench, trying to extricate his legs.

“I’m not sure I have the right to address the Pack as for-speaker?” says a reedy, uncertain voice.

Tara’s eyes turn quickly to John, who gives an almost imperceptible nod.

“The Pack acknowledges Charles Bjorksson,” she says.

I hadn’t seen Charlie since the Slitung. I don’t spend much time in the Clearing during any Iron Moon, but this time, I avoided it altogether. I didn’t want to see the coyotes eating Ronan’s remains, and I dreaded finding Charlie there, still chasing his tail.

This Iron Moon took a lot out of him, and when he stands, he supports himself against the table.

“I am ashamed to come before you. I can only imagine what you think of me. I failed to do what needed to be done once. I can’t fail again. Everyone knows Quicksilver Nilsdottir. Most of us remember her parents as great Alphas. Most, but not all. The younger echelons don’t. My son didn’t. I was honored when I learned that their daughter would be my son’s schildere, but he felt she was… He felt her… He resented her.

“I’m not a very good speaker, so I think I may be making a mess of this, but what I mean is that Quicksilver didn’t owe Ronan anything, not as a mate, not as a bedfellow. Not even as Pack. But when I… When I failed to take First Blood, to do this final service for my son, she took that on herself as a kindness to him, to me, and to the Pack. It was an act of worth. At least, I think it was.”

He lowers himself to the bench and then stands back up. “That’s it,” he adds lamely. “That’s all I wanted to say.” Then he sits.

John leans back and whispers something to Tara, who strides quickly toward his office.

A few moments later, Evie comes out. Okay, now this is why we’ve seen so little of John’s mate in the past few weeks. She’s pregnant, and the entire room erupts in cheers.

Evie and John have been mates for what must be 360 moons, but there is something about our genetics, our chromosomes constantly in transition between our two selves, that makes it very hard for us to get pregnant and even harder for us to stay pregnant. Because so much can go wrong and usually does, pregnancy is hidden as long as possible, but Evie can’t anymore. She is entering the last and hardest moon of her pregnancy and will need the help of the entire Pack.

Everyone shouts “Anhydig hama!” the Old Tongue blessing meaning something between Resolute Birthing! and Stalwart Lying-In!

Evie pulls out the chair next to John, but before she sits, her mate whispers to her. She remains standing, her body tense.

With a sigh, John asks if there are any wiþer-spreca. Against-speakers.

Evie asks leave to speak and then tells the pups to go. “Juveniles too,” she says when a few of the older ones stop, unsure if this means them.

Tara signals to Marco, who opens the ties on two small cloth bags and starts to walk between the tables distributing the pebbles—one dark, one light—for each wolf. These are what the Pack will use to indicate which of the two speakers was most convincing. This is how the Pack will vote on our application to join the Pack.

“Quicksilver,” Evie says in her still slightly accented voice, “if I could, I would treat your Pack claim separately. But by law, I cannot, and my objections to the Shifter”—she stares at him, her fingers splayed on the table—“are simply too strong.”

As Marco comes to our table, Ti watches Gran Jean receive a smooth pebble from each bag. He glances at my tightly folded hands and does nothing.

“I wanted this to be a time for focusing on the future,” Evie continues, “not for dwelling on the past, but I am the only one here who knows what you really are.”

Her hard eyes bore into Ti.

“It is amazing…all these years later…what that smell means. It was two oceans and nearly six hundred moons ago, but I still recognize it. And you still smell like steel, Shifter. Just like the Shifters who overran my poor pack in my eightieth moon, looking for treasure we didn’t have. Steel was in the guns they used to shoot every male and female and pup, except for the little one whose scent they missed because she was cowering in the cesspit.

“It was in the knives they used to skin them. It was in their laughter when they poked at my Pack’s flayed bodies and joked because they were not human underneath, just naked dogs.” Her voice breaks, and the last words come out in a hoarse whisper. “It was in the shillings they made selling the skins of my Pack. The only treasure they ever found.”

She stares out the window, her jaw clamped so tightly that I think her teeth must shatter. John waves to Tara, who collects the Thing from the mantelpiece. The Thing is what we call the deep box with a hole in the top big enough to accommodate even the largest fist, so that when the stone is dropped, no one can see whether it is dark or light.

Evie’s story has been whispered among the Pack, but this was the first time I have heard it directly from her mouth. This is not going to go well for us.

But we have two more moons to prove ourselves.

The bench bends a little under Ti as he sits back and pulls himself upright. He doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at the floor. Then he strides over to the Thing in Tara’s hands.

“I know I am only a guest here and that this vote is for Pack, but I must say something.” One hand is tightly fisted by his side. “Until I was old enough to live on my own, I spent every day listening to the whispers of my father’s people. The Shifters who hated me, who called me a dog and son of a bitch because I was half Pack.

“Then I came here and became half Shifter.”

He holds up a dark pebble, the one that Gran Jean didn’t know she was missing, and shows it between thumb and forefinger for the entire Pack to see. “I don’t want to go through that here. Silver, you don’t deserve to have your fate tied to mine. But I would rather be alone than live with that loneliness again.”

He drops the pebble into the empty wooden box, and with that dull knock, Tiberius votes against himself.

* * *

As soon as the Iron Moon Table is over, Pack crisscross the three short stairs that lead to the Meeting House, carrying things in and carrying things out. Each time snow is tracked in on boots or paws, shovels scrape and brooms sweep, so that the wood is clean and no one will slip and the slush is kept outside.

Except for two tables and a few chairs, all the usual furniture of the Meeting House has been piled into the tiny room in the back. Everything is being scrubbed, from the top of the rough-hewn beams to the hearth of the stone fireplace under the wood-burning stove.

Ti carries the heavy canvas bag loaded with blackout curtains we will hang.

Once everything else is done, the floors are scrubbed and a thick, muffling carpet put down that was cleaned and stored after the last lying-in. Four strong Pack move a big bed under the middle beam. Hooks there support the lights that Evie will control from her bed.

On one side is a chair and a bed for her mate. On the other, every conceivable piece of medical equipment.

Food and drink flow in until the pantry and the little refrigerator are stocked with everything Evie likes best.

The backup generators are double-checked.

Sara flies down the few steps, car keys in hand. “I’m getting bagels from Myer’s. Anything else you can think she might need from Burlington?”

“Seems kind of over the top,” Ti says, watching Sara’s retreating back.

“Well, what do Shifters do for a lying-in?”

A chair is brought in for Evie’s attending physician.

“Ti? What do Shifters do?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he mumbles. “I was the last live birth.”

A new pillow top is brought in to make sure she will be comfortable.

“Don’t say anything,” he says.

“Did I say anything?”

Finally, Evie herself is escorted in by the Alphas of every echelon. Each one lays their head beside hers. She tries to smile, but she still looks apprehensive.

The Alphas make ready to move her into the bed. They pull back the blankets, fluff the pillows, smooth the sheets. When the six most senior Alphas, her mate included, lift her gently onto the bed, I can’t help feeling that they look like pallbearers. Evie is stiff and awkward, but she knows that this is the tradition for every female at her lying-in. She knows it is an important symbol of the Alphas’ responsibility to the future of the Pack.

Gabi, the obstetrician, helps Evie into the holster that will keep the ultrasound transducer against her pregnant stomach. She adjusts it, laughing and trying to put Evie at ease. Alex, who is a radiologist, has extensive experience reading the ultrasounds during a lying-in. Without taking his eyes from the screen, he reaches across to tinker with the transducer. Barely five minutes go by before he calls, “Now.”

Evie starts to change.

And this is why the last weeks are the hardest. Early on, the pups change into babies, and the babies turn into pups in response to their mother’s hormones. But toward the end, the tiny cretins become self-aware and start doing it themselves, responding not to their mother’s hormones but to one another’s.

So back and forth they go, and Evie has no choice but to change too before her body rejects the aliens inside.

Gabi adjusts the harness so it will stay fixed to her contorting belly. How they ever managed to survive before all the medical technology is a mystery. Or not. They often didn’t.

If Evie hasn’t delivered by the Iron Moon, she will be induced, because we can’t risk her trying to deliver when she’s turned. If she changes and the babies don’t, they’re too large. They will all die, and there won’t be a thing anyone can do about it.

“They’re changing back.”

And except for short exhausted interludes, this is the way it’ll be for the next three and a half weeks.