by Maria Vale
And for the first time in many years, Ælfrida, the last Alpha of the Great Pack of Mercia, allowed herself to feel hope.
“Be sure to wash them well,” she said, more softly now. She would not have the pups coming to the New World smelling of the corruption and death of the old.
Unfortunately, Ælfrida had one last thing to do to make sure her Pack could leave safely. It was a shitty job, but that’s what it meant to be Alpha.
She’d seen the Shifter lingering near the dock and walked until she found his scent and tracked him to a nearby tavern. He seemed no more surprised to see Ælfrida than she was to see him. He was, he said, devastated that the human guards had betrayed Wulfric. Humans, he said, had no sense of honor, of a promise made and kept. But he could not bear life as a lone wolf, he said, and would serve her in whatever way she needed in return for a place in the Pack.
He never mentioned Seolfer or the three great chests that he had tracked to Portsmouth. Nor did he mention the pistol he carried, though the scent of gunpowder was tart in Ælfrida’s nose.
Ælfrida watched a young human woman, barely out of girlhood, smile at a customer and saw the customer’s body relax. When the girl touched his arm, he leaned forward, his scent becoming suddenly receptive. Ælfrida turned to the Shifter and gave him the same barmaid smile and the same barmaid touch, and his scent became musky. The blandishments that Ælfrida presumed he had used on poor Wulfric he now used on her, along with his fingers and palm. Finally, they went to one of the back rooms. “To formalize things,” he said archly.
* * *
“If you’re going to puke, puke leeward,” the captain of the Assurance had said, muttering something impertinent.
Ælfrida was beyond caring about impertinence. She leaned over the rail he had pointed to, and as she started to vomit once more, she called upon the moon to witness that as long as she lived, she would never eat Shifter again.
Chapter 1
Upstate New York, 2018
Wolves who drink smell like Baileys and kibble.
It doesn’t matter that Ronan’s poison is a 7 and 7 and chimichangas at the casino over at Hogansburg, there’s something about our livers that still makes him smell like Baileys and kibble.
He lies slumped partly on his stomach, partly on his side at the edge of the Clearing, the broad expanse of spongy grass and drowned trees that is what remains of an old beaver pond that fell into disrepair when the Pack ate the beavers one lean year. New beavers have established a new pond nearby. Eventually we will eat those too.
And so it goes.
The Clearing is used for ceremonies and rituals because it is open and accommodates larger numbers. Usually the Pack prefers the cool, muffled, fragrant darkness of the forest, treating the Clearing like an anxious Catholic treats the church. We shuffle in on major celebrations and otherwise give it a wide berth.
The Dæling, which I suppose translates most conveniently as “Dealing,” is one of those celebrations. It marks the transition of our age group, our echelon, from juvenile to adult. Here, we are paired off, not as mates yet, but in practice couplings. We will also have our own Alpha who answers only to the Pack Alpha and is responsible for keeping our echelon in line. The whole hierarchy will be set up. Not that it’s permanent or anything, more like the start times assigned before the lengthy competition that is Pack life.
Basically, the Dæling is one enormous squabble. There are challenges for the right to pair with a stronger wolf and challenges for a more elevated place in the hierarchy. Our whole youth has been taken up with tussling and posturing, but now it really counts. A wolf who is pinned to the ground in front of the Pack Alpha is the loser. Period. This sorting out of rankings and couples takes a long time, and the others watch it with endless fascination.
Me? Not so much. Born crippled and a runt, I’ve had to struggle long and hard for my position at the dead bottom of the hierarchy. I’ve never fought anyone, because there is no honor in making me submit, no rank to be won by beating the runt.
Ronan, on the other hand, is big and was once strong enough to be the presumptive Alpha. But he is, as they say, weak of marrow. With no determination or perseverance, he has become filled with fat and drink and resentful dreams of life as it is lived on Netflix. His nose is cold and wet when he’s human and hot and dry when he’s not.
“He’s not much, our Ronan.” That’s what Gran Drava said to me. “But he’s a male and…”
She gave me one more sniff before leaning back on the sofa in the Meeting House, where the 14th Echelon was gathered for her inspection. Her eyes and back are failing, but her sense of smell and her knowledge of Pack bloodlines are not. “And he isn’t within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity.”
So because he is weak of marrow and I am weak of body, we find ourselves together at the bottom of the 14th.
When the Pack Alpha eventually turns our way, I nudge Ronan, who doesn’t stand until I bite him. Finally, he hobbles up, looking at me mournfully with his greasy eyes. Nobody much pays attention as we approach the Alpha. They’re all too busy debriding each other’s wounds and sniffing new companions’ bodies.
John’s paw hangs lazily over the edge of a granite outcropping shot through with mica that shimmers slightly in the moonlight. It seems like a nervous eternity, waiting for John’s pro forma nod of approval.
It doesn’t come. Instead, he pulls himself up, one leg at a time, until he reaches his full height. The paler fur of his belly shimmers as he shakes himself and jumps down to the damp sod.
His nose flares as he approaches us. Anxiously, I push myself closer to Ronan’s flank. John presses his muzzle between us, shoving me away. He sniffs the air around Ronan and starts to slap at Ronan, each hit of his head getting harder until Ronan stumbles backward.
John bares his teeth, snarling.
Ronan blinks a few times as though he is just waking. He wavers unsteadily, trying to comprehend the simple gesture that was all it took to exile him from the protection of our law, our land, our Pack. The sentence that forces him into a life wandering from Pack to Pack searching for a place until he dies in a puddle of blood and/or vomit, like most exiles do.
I scuttle to John, my head and stomach scraping the grass, my tail tucked between my legs, submitting into the earth not because I care about Ronan, but because if he leaves, then I am a lone wolf. There’s an old saying that lone wolves are the only ones who always breed, their children being Frustration and Dissent. That’s why they are given over to their echelon’s Alphas to be their servants, their nidlings. A nidling has nothing, is nothing. Even at the bottom rank, you’re paired with someone who is just as shit a wolf as you are, so at least at home, you don’t have to submit. But the nidling’s life is one of endless submission.
John snaps at me, then at Ronan. I roll on my back, my eyes averted, whimpering. But since he’s made up his mind, no amount of groveling is going to make any difference. John wants Ronan gone. He stands erect, leaning over Ronan’s now-shivering body, and a low growl emerges from deep in his chest. Any second now, he will attack.
Ronan backs away, shell-shocked. He stops for a moment, still looking hopefully at John, until the Alpha lunges forward. The exile trips over his own feet as he turns to go.
He doesn’t even bother to look at me.
John stays alert, watching until Ronan lurches into the dark forest. He listens a moment more to be sure the exile is truly gone before he howls and signals an end to the Dæling. The newly reordered 14th finds their pairs and their places behind John. I’m all the way at the end, where I’m used to being, until our Alpha, Solveig, runs back and, with a growl, reminds me that I am to follow her and her companion, Eudemos, the pairing who now control my life. I take up my place behind them, my tail dragging between my legs.
Stopping suddenly with one paw raised, John focuses on a sharp bark in the night. It is a warning
from a perimeter wolf. Probably signaling that a hunter has trespassed on our land. Wolves will be gathering around the interloper now, following the hunter at a silent distance. As there’s nothing like an honor guard of seething wolves to scare off prey, hunters usually give up pretty quickly.
John lifts his head, his nose working hard as he looks toward the north woods. I can smell it too. Over the fragrance of fecund grass and swollen water and bog and sphagnum come the subtle scent of a half-dozen Pack and the overwhelming stench of salt and steel and blood and decay.
With a quick snap of his jaws, our Alpha sends our echelon’s fastest wolf back to Home Pond for older reinforcements. John runs around to the north flank, closely followed by Solveig and Eudemos and the other newly minted leaders of the 14th. His forefeet are light on the damp grass, his hind legs ready to jump. Hunters don’t come this far in. This is past the high gates and barbed fences and threatening signs and the trackless tangle of ancient, upended spruce and their young that are the reminders of a violent blowdown ten years ago.
The footsteps are soft and definitely human. Heel, the controlled curve along the outer rim of the foot. The toe barely grazing the grass. It is the footfall of someone used to stealth. I wouldn’t have heard it at all, except for the occasional stumble.
Solveig’s haunches tighten in front of me.
Finally, a man appears. He blends in with the night, so it is only when he walks into the moonlit clearing that we can see him. Sometimes we say someone has a heart or an ego or an appetite “as big as night.”
But this tall, broad-shouldered human is really as big as night.
He pauses for a moment before threading his way through the wolves and lowering his body into the center of the Clearing. He crosses his jeans-clad legs. His feet are bare. Aside from a dark jacket, he has only two things:
A gun and a gaping hole in his stomach.
Chapter 2
“I know who you are, and I won’t hurt you,” the stranger says in a voice that is cool and hard and perfectly calibrated to reach even to the outer ring of the wolves who were following him. “This.” His hand caresses the gun. “This is just for protection.”
As soon as John gives a nod, I start forward. When I am wild, I am a strong tracker. More importantly, I am expendable. If the man shoots me, then we will know what he’s up to. He is armed and will kill many of us. And though he will eventually die, the careful ordering of our Pack will be undone.
His eyes lock on mine, and he slowly moves his hand to his knee so I can see that he’s not touching the gun.
I creep close, starting with the wound. He has been clawed and not by one wolf; I can make out at least three different scents. They circled him and came at him from different directions.
For us, only the most heinous crimes warrant a disemboweling. But the Slitung, flesh-tearing, is a solemn ritual, not butchery. Every muzzle must be bloodied, so the tragedy of a life that we have failed is borne by all.
This man may not look it, but he is extraordinarily lucky. There is damage to the fascia and muscles, and while there is blood—and a lot of it—there is not the distinctive smell of a gut wound. Those things are hard to repair and go septic quickly.
Lifting my nose to the spot behind his ear, I almost gag at the overwhelming human smell of steel and death. But before I recoil, I catch the scent of something else. Snorting out air to get a clear hit, I try again. It’s faint but it’s here—crushed bone and evergreen—and it’s wild.
There’s only one creature in the world that smells both human and wild, and it is the creature we fear most.
Shifters are like us, but not. We can all of us change. But we cannot always change back. We are the children of the Iron Moon, and for three days out of thirty, we must be as we are now. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing—putting coolant in the backup generator, coming back late on the Grand Isle ferry (retrieving the car required some explaining)—Death and the Iron Moon wait for no wolf.
It is our great strength and our great weakness. We depend on one another. We support one another. Without the Pack, we are feral strays, trapped in a human world without words or opposable thumbs.
Shifters can always shift. They are opportunists. They used to change back and forth as it suited them, but now that humans are top predator, it suits them to be human. Like humans, they are narcissistic, self-delusional, and greedy. But they can scent things that humans can’t, and they are dangerous hunters.
They know what we are, and in these past centuries, our numbers have been decimated by Shifters coming upon a Pack during the Iron Moon and slaughtering us with their human weapons.
There is something else, though, about this Shifter’s deeply buried wild. Something more familiar than simply wolf. Moving close to where the scent is most concentrated, I suck in a deep breath.
“Found something you like?”
Snarling, I back awkwardly away from his crotch, but moving backward at a crouch makes my bad leg turn under, and the pain tears through my hip. Bone grinds against bone, and I stumble.
“A runt and a cripple?”
I flash my fangs at him. I may be a runt and a cripple, but I am still a wolf, damn it. John and Solveig and Demos sniff at my muzzle and immediately know what I know. Ears flatten, fur bristles, forefeet are planted, haunches bend under, and a menacing rumble spreads through powerful chests.
“Yes, my father is Shifter, but my mother is…was…Pack-born. Mala Imanisdottir.”
I knew it. I knew he smelled familiar. John sniffs my muzzle again, scenting for proof of his ancestry.
“I challenged our leader, and I lost. I escaped his first attempt to kill me, but I won’t escape another.” His mind seems to wander, and then, with a real effort, he focuses again. “My father told me to escape. Find you. You are my last chance.”
John looks out across his Pack, now bolstered with the older echelons. He snaps at the air over one shoulder and orders the Pack home. Mala or no Mala, this is the Great North Pack, not a sanctuary. The enormous Shifter will bleed out, eaten by the coyotes who even now are signaling to each other that there is something big and dying. They won’t come near us, but as soon as we are gone, they will move in.
Solveig growls softly, calling me to heel. I hadn’t realized how far ahead they had gotten. I stumble after her with my tail between my legs.
“The runt,” the man calls between panted breaths. “She’s not mated?”
Without turning, John stops.
“My mother said that the Pack would accept a lone wolf if there was another willing lone wolf.” A short cough tightens his face in pain. “She told my father,” he says. His skin is graying, and the circles beneath his eyes are so dark. “Before she died. She told my father.”
There is some truth in what the Shifter says. Some. Unfortunately, none of us has the paper, the pencil, the voices, or the hands to sit him down and explain the complexities.
John motions me toward him and rests his head on my shoulders. He’s so huge and comforting. His smell is the smell of home, and I can’t imagine not being surrounded by him. He represents protection from the outside and order at home.
He butts me lightly with his nose. The stranger doesn’t know the complexities, but I certainly do. The choice is mine. If I return with my Pack, the stranger will die and I will be a nidling. As low as it is, I will have my place within the Pack.
But if I stay…
Then I am gambling that this Shifter and I are strong enough to fight for—and win—a full place in the Pack. It is a gamble, though, because if we can’t, both of us are exiled. He will be no worse off, but I will careen from bad decision to bad decision, ending up in the same damn puddle of blood and/or vomit as Ronan.
The enormous Shifter weaves in our midst. I run back and sniff at him. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he looks really strong, and with a little help, he should
make it. He lifts his head, and for the first time, I see his face. He’s darker than John’s mate, Evie, but where her eyes are pure black, his are black shot through with shards of gold.
He whispers something that even my sensitive ears must strain to catch.
“Runt?” he murmurs. “I don’t want to die.” Then he collapses into the grass.
The Pack is already filtering out of the Clearing. Demos gives a curious sniff of the prone body and snarls. He swings his fat head, hitting my backside, telling me to get a move on.
Maybe if he hadn’t done that, I’d have crouched down and followed. This is my world, and the Pack is my life, but I haven’t put this much work into surviving only to spend the rest of my life obeying every snarky whim of a thuggish half-wit like Eudemos.
I nip at his ear, the universally understood signal—at least among Pack, it’s universally understood—to go fuck yourself. I shake out my back and straighten my tail and walk as tall as I can back to the Shifter. I lay my head across his shoulder.
John takes one look along his flank and starts to run. The Pack follows quickly until they are nothing but the occasional flicker of fur among the spruce.
Except for the low, slow plaintive cry of the loon on Clear Pond, it is silent. Then comes the reverberating howl signaling that John is home. The wolves stationed at the perimeter take up the howl.
“We are,” they say.
I’d cry if I could, but I can’t. I’d howl if I could, just to say Me too, but I can’t.
All I can do is nudge the huge mound collapsed in a damp hollow of the Clearing. Early fall nights in the Adirondacks are too cold for humans, especially lightly clothed, partially eviscerated ones. It takes a few nips to find a good purchase on his jacket, then I lock it between my jaws. I don’t like the plastic taste, but I pull anyway. In fits and starts, I move his inert bulk to a slight rise where it’s not so damp, but there’s no way that either the jacket or I are going to be able to make it much farther.
