Chapter 29

Tiberius is trying so hard. He’s learning to distinguish the scent of a sick deer, the torn-up stumps that mean bear, the shorelines that attract raccoon, the gnaw marks of muskrat (nummy) vs. the gnaw marks of a porcupine (pointless).

Because he won’t ever be a real wolf until he learns to hunt. But he won’t ever learn to hunt until he learns to hunger.

It’s not easy.

“You said they tasted like chips,” he says, washing out his mouth again.

“I said voles are like chips. They’re crunchy. A little salty. And nobody can eat just one.”

He leans down, pulling his lip away from a flat bicuspid.

“There’s something stuck between my teeth. Do you see it?” Before I can look, he coughs. “And there’s hair in the back of my throat.”

I find myself afraid to look into the mirror, afraid to discover that I’ve stepped into someone else’s life and love and luck. We are officially the 14th Echelon’s Theta pair. I’m not strong enough for a higher position, and Tiberius can’t hunt. But Theta is a good position, hitting that sweet spot in the hierarchy between grim pathos and seething envy.

Our little cabin is perfect. We’re working steadily with the silent Sten. There are a lot of voles. And most of all, I am mated to a man I love more than I can express in words.

There are times when we run that everything seems like a metaphor for that love. The root wrapped tight around an inopportune rock. The black tree dusted with a silver shimmer of snow. The low sun piercing through the netted forest canopy. Love and greed. The two great catalysts of human endeavor. I don’t understand greed, but I fear it, because if human greed is half as strong as my love, then all the safeguards of all those generations of Pack are worth nothing.

* * *

Last week’s strong winds mean blowdown. Wolves search the forest for likely looking trees, while others take turns chopping before the wind-thrown wood turns to ice.

Ti and I are the ones doing the chopping now. Both of us have stripped down to muscle shirts. There is something hypnotic about the winter quiet, interrupted by nothing but the thunk of the maul, the crack of the split log, the dull stuttering fall of wood on snow-muted earth, and wolf howl.

Deep-Deep-Deep-Deep

I startle at the unexpected sound. A furrow appears on Ti’s brow. Then John passes at a run. With a quick look at each other, we follow.

“What is it?” I ask Sara, the wolf on gate duty.

“A truck.”

“I can see that. I mean, what’s it doing here?”

“Not sure, but John’s called for Tara and Josi.”

Then the wind shifts, and even though I can’t see into the cab of the truck, I smell oil and heated plastic and carrion sticks.

Anderson jumps to the ground, his voice growing louder. Two burly, beer-gutted men emerge from the back, one with his hand reaching to the back of his waistband.

Josi, the 3rd Echelon’s lawyer, arrives, racing past in oversize rubber boots and an anorak. Her legs are covered with fleece pajamas that mark her as someone who has an office and a life Offland. Still, Josi is our go-to for leading the second prong of a pincer attack and New York property law.

Sara opens the gate for her.

Josi begins talking with Anderson, softly and urgently, while John looks on. Other members of the Pack arrive, cleaning under their nails with seaxes, knocking mud from their boots with mallets, scratching their calves with oversized adzes.

A door opens on the passenger side of the cab, and a man jumps down. His lungs react to the first bite of sharp, cold air with dry, expulsive barks.

“Mr. Torrance?” says the Smoker, holding out his hand as he walks around the front of the truck. “Daniel Leary. I represent the new owner. We’re clearing out Mr. Anderson’s lot here.” He taps his chest and coughs again. When he stops, a line of silver glimmers at his gum line. “Sorry,” he says. “My lungs.”

He must see Ti standing huge at the front of the gate, fisting the enormous maul, but he ignores him, reaching into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He taps it firmly against the heel of his hand.

“Only one left,” Leary says quietly, almost to himself. Ti’s eyes narrow. A single cigarette slides out. “But legally, it’s still a pack of cigarettes. Even if there is only one left. It is still a pack.”

John and Josi and Anderson all look baffled for a moment while he cups his hands around his lighter, drawing hard on his cigarette until the tip glows red. “This kind burns real nice,” he says before dropping his lighter into his pocket and turning back to the huddled conversation.

Ti stands frozen for an eternity and then, without taking his eyes from Leary, lifts his maul high over his head and brings it down on a pale granite boulder embedded in the frozen earth. A chunk shears away into powder.

Leary doesn’t react at all, but Anderson puts his hand to his chest, and the one beer-gutted man puts his hand to his waistband again.

John signals to Tara. After a few whispered words, she returns to the gate.

“Your Alpha says you are to leave,” she says quietly. “These are nervous men with guns. He will not see any of you hurt.”

And because John spoke not as himself but as our Alpha, the Pack disperses in the wind like the seeds of a dandelion.

Except for my furious mate, who has to be dragged and pushed all the way to our cabin. By the time I slam the door and block it with my body, he is panting and pacing like a caged wolf. He slams his fist into the door beside my shoulder, making me jump. I wipe the tiny slivers of wood from my sleeves.

“That’s enough, Ti.” I hold out my hands to his, to see the flayed meat at his knuckles. I start to pick out a few odd splinters. “So your father bought that land. So what? It’s not like he’s going to drill on five acres.”

He tightens for a second as I pull on one last splinter buried deep in the valley between the last two knuckles. As soon as I spit it out, I close my lips gently over his shredded skin and let my tongue swirl gently across it.

Ti has changed. He doesn’t say anything now, just lets me. He pushes my hair back with his undamaged hand.

“He was sending me a message.”

“Hmm?” I ask, my mouth otherwise occupied.

“That’s why he bought that land. To send me a message.” He sits on the sofa, pulling me after him. I curl my knees up on either side of his hips and lean my head on his chest, listening to his wolfish heart. “Somehow, my father has seen the Trust. Must know that it can only be altered by a unanimous decision of the Pack. But what makes a Pack? That’s what Leary was saying. Legally, it’s still a Pack even if there’s only one.”

I lift my head. Only one? Only one wolf? No wolf would betray the Pack. Maybe he’s thinking Tiberius?

“You would be the Pack of one?” I almost laugh. I know my mate well enough now to realize he has no love for his father. “Why would he think you’d do anything for him?”

“He doesn’t think. He knows. You missed the true meaning of that performance. You weren’t supposed to understand it. It was meant for me alone. I’m the one who knows that Leary always smokes Marlboro Red. Always. It was no mistake that this one time, he was smoking Marlboro Silver. And when he said…” Ti props his chin on my head. “When he said, ‘This kind burns real nice,’ he was threatening you. I broke his jaw for pointing his finger at you. And because I didn’t kill him then, my father knows how to control me now.”

Licking my teeth, I still taste Tiberius’s blood, rich and bittersweet on my tongue.

In England, right before our founding Alpha left, they say one of the greatest Packs was destroyed. It had been wealthy and powerful with scores of strong wolves. But one Iron Moon, Shifters and humans came on them during the change and bludgeoned them. Shot them. Cut off their heads and hung them from the branches of the great oaks, their blood soaking into their land.

Now all I can see is our trees festooned with the sightless heads of our wolves. Our land soaked with our blood.

“Where are you going, Wildfire?”

I hadn’t realized that my hand was on the door handle. “Hunting. I need to hunt. I need to think.”

“I’ll work this out. You know that, right? It’s all going to be fine.”

“I know, min coren. It’s all going to be fine.” I reach up to slide my cheek against his. He holds me tight, rocking me, reluctant to let go.

At the Great Hall, I take four prepaid charge cards and the ID Tara gave me last time I went Offland.

In the basement, I grab food and clothes and fit it all in the neon-green daypack with a logo that reads, god help me, Hound for Glory.

One by one, I close the doors tightly behind me: the warped ledge and brace door to dry storage, the heavy double doors to the Great Hall, the storm doors to the foyer.

I start for the ends of the earth. Once I’m there, I will change and wait for the Iron Moon to pull me over the edge of wildness. Then I will be an æcewulf. A real wolf. A forever wolf. And August Leveraux will have lost any control he has over Tiberius or the Great North Pack.

I am ready.