by Maria Vale
I brought Ronan here because while I love the whole of the Homelands, I have a special warmth for the Krummholz. Maybe it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that where I saw something noble in the small and crippled trees clinging fiercely to their precarious existence, Ronan saw only pathos and failure.
Ronan had once been the presumptive Alpha of our echelon. It was years ago, so it’s hard for me to remember, but I think that was very important to him. He’d been born with a lucky genetic mix that made him biggest and most powerful almost without trying.
Because he didn’t have to work at it, he was eventually surpassed by those who did. Like Solveig, who’d spent grim hours shifting big rocks. After a few months of rock shifting, she challenged Ronan and, in the fight, tore into him over and over again until John told her to put an end to it. She didn’t want Ronan as her Beta, so she not only made him submit, she made him weak, vulnerable. Challenge by challenge, he started his slide down until he landed at the very bottom with me.
The only thing his big size got him was alcohol when he was nineteen. He’d come home usually drunk and sometimes with money. He hid his winnings under my mattress. “It’s not like you’re ever going to use it.”
I kept his secrets, because without him, I would be a lone wolf. And I shared my own, hoping he would see that while I might be a crippled runt, I had cool stuff in my arsenal too.
Ti follows me toward the eye-shaped break in the layered rock that would be tough for him to squeeze through, but I slip easily over the lip and under the lid. As a wolf, my eyes adjust to the dim light. As a wolf, though, I am almost undone by the smells. Sickly sweet spilled liquor. Rotting meat. Ammonia and excrement. My nose is overwhelmed and useless for scenting out Golan.
“Is that you, Silver?” asks a tatty sleeping bag at the back of the cave.
I sneeze as I push aside some old boxes.
“Not looking for me, then, schildere? He’s in the bag. Stupid thing. Would not shut up. Couldn’t very well have the Pack knowing the exile had returned, could I?”
My heart pounding against my ribs, I gently scrape at the cord of the backpack near Ronan’s feet until I hear a tiny muffled whimper. With my paw, I nudge Golan out. His little eyes look terrified over a crumpled muzzle of duct tape. Though he stinks of fresh piss, I pick him up gently between my teeth—the pup goes limp as they always do—and hurry him away from all this dirt and misery to the mouth of the cave.
As soon as he feels the fresh air, Golan’s little legs churn up the dried wort that serves as ground cover up here, but I don’t let him go. Pulling a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, Ti clamps one hand tight around the struggling pup’s jaw and carefully cuts through the tape so Golan can at least open his mouth.
I let him go, and the terrified fur ball runs, with Ti hot on his trail.
“I don’ suppose you can just take the kid,” Ronan slurs behind me. “Forget you foun’ me?”
I suck in a deep breath of cold, wet Krummholz air and howl.
John responds almost immediately.
“Of course not.” Ronan turns in his sleeping bag and stares at the roof of the cave. “You know I went to John before the Dæling. After I’d had those two disastrous challenges. It wasn’t fair; the ground had been so slick during that first fight that I’d slipped. My leg was still messed up two days later when I had my second challenge, but John refused to let me have another chance.”
I don’t know why he’s telling me this. What has this got to do with kidnapping a tiny pup, taping his muzzle, and shoving him in a backpack?
“Anyway, we got to talking about how I was born to be an Alpha, and once my luck changed and I got back on my feet, I would be again, but—and I don’t mean this as an insult or anything, you understand, it’s just true—you were never going to be anything but a Kappa at best. So while I might be your schildere, I would never mate you.”
I peer over my shoulder.
“You know what John said?”
Ti comes back with the struggling pup held tight against him. He strokes Golan’s head and sits on the rock outside the cave’s entrance. The rain has soaked the cupped hood of his borrowed parka.
“John said you were twice the wolf I would ever be, and he’d be damned if he’d ever let you be mated with me. With me.”
I hear Ronan struggle with the zipper of his sleeping bag.
“What a waste,” he says. I look toward the back of the cave. Ronan is sitting now on top of the sleeping bag, a once-white dress shirt falling open, revealing soft, pale thighs and a limp, dark cock. “I mean him. The Shifter. Yeah, you. I’m talking about you.”
Ti turns his head to the side, not far enough to see Ronan but far enough to make clear he’s heard him.
“I told you my luck would change, Sil, and it did. I got back all the money John gave me and more, and I was free. I rented a car, and you know where I drove it? East of no-fucking-where. I had no place I had to be. Nothing I had to do. I bought shirts that weren’t easy to care for. And guess what? I screwed human women who were never going to breed more Pack. I was free to do what I wanted.
“I was free,” he murmurs once more. “But then my luck changed again, and I was right back where I started.”
Golan has settled a little and allows his head to fall against Ti’s broad chest.
“Silver?” Ti says quietly. “Any water in there?”
Ronan leans back and, grabbing something from behind him, throws it toward me. I nose the bottle toward Ti, who pours it into his cupped hand.
With a sharp bark, John announces himself. Ronan turns his face to the wall. He doesn’t have any fight left in him, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to walk to his death. They’re going to have to drag him out.
Chapter 20
The circle of wolves in the Clearing tightens around Ronan, and for the first time since my Dæling, I am deeply grateful that I am not Pack. I am just a guest and don’t have to be part of this.
But when I start to lope away, Ti doesn’t move. He doesn’t understand what is happening, so I nip at his pant leg. The Alphas of each echelon are taking up their positions at the front of the circle. Everyone wants this over with quickly.
Opening a passage for Charlie, John nudges Ronan’s father toward his son. In its mercy, Pack law allows First Blood to Ronan’s family, so that when the Pack eviscerates him, Ronan won’t feel anything. I plant my front paws and pull Ti harder, because I really don’t want to watch Charlie rip out his son’s throat.
Ti doesn’t move.
John nudges Charlie again, but Charlie just stares at Ronan, his head cocked, his mouth open. His eyes roll around the circle searching for help he won’t find, because to be on Pack land as an exile is bad enough, but the only response to an attack on a pup is a Slitung, a flesh-tearing, and every wolf shows teeth. Charlie throws himself on the ground in front of John, his feet up in the air, his hips shimmying back and forth in a clownish show of submission.
John snaps at him.
Charlie follows our Alpha around, one ear up, the other down, his mouth open in a rabid leer, until with a quick look over his shoulder, John signals Tara to drag the broken wolf away from the Pack. Tara grabs his muzzle tight in her powerful jaws and drags him off mewling. I run beside him whimpering too, begging Charlie to come to his senses long enough to do this last kindness. He seems not to even see me, more interested in the furry thing following behind him. As soon as Tara lets him go, he starts to chase his tail, barking.
Tara turns her back on him with a growl and a dismissive kick of rain-sodden soil. She heads back to the Pack, which clears a path for her. As John’s Beta, Tara has a place of honor, but she also has a place of responsibility and is expected to be right up front for the Slitung. I stick to her slipstream and push through to the whimpering Ronan.
Rubbing my muzzle against his, I turn to John, my body down,
my head between my paws. I’m not sure he will accept my claim to First Blood, but I have a better chance if I at least smell like the wolf who had been my schildere but who never wanted to be my mate.
John’s nose bumps against mine, telling me to get up. With a quick snap of his jaws, the Pack retreats, giving us room. John is a good wolf and a great Alpha and, if given a choice, will always choose mercy.
First Blood allows for one bite only, and if Ronan decides to fight me, I doubt I’ll be able to make the kill. But after everything that has happened, the once-upon-a-time Alpha of the 14th Echelon seems to understand that his luck is not going to change again.
He lies back with his chin stretched high, staring at the mountains and the pinpoints of stars and the real world, the world of men, that he so wanted to be a part of.
Opening my jaws wide, I gently take his throat between them. It’s what we do, and it means trust me. It means I see you at your most vulnerable.
I bite down fast and hard on the cartilage tube, giving it the same fatal break I would for a deer. Ronan struggles a little, and blood spurts into my mouth. I curl my tongue against the back of my throat, because I don’t want to swallow this blood. I don’t want to be nourished by this death.
The pulse of his blood slows, but I don’t lift my head until it stops.
Before I even stumble out of the way, the Pack surges forward, eager to be done with this particular bit of ritual butchery.
I race for Clear Pond, my paws sinking through the cold, thick mud and dying sedges. Pushing the air out of my lungs, I sink into the water and stay down until my own throat is on the verge of collapse, and the blood that had already started to stiffen on my muzzle and chest and legs begins to melt away from my fur. Maybe there was so much that all of Clear Pond is tainted, but no matter how many gulps of water I take, my mouth still has the sharp, metallic tang of blood, and there’s something stuck in my teeth.
I start to change, and as soon as I’m finished, I pick at the thing with my fingers until it comes loose. I don’t look at it before throwing it into the weeds. I think the change was a mistake, though, because in skin, I feel the intense cold of the schist on my naked body and the icy water running from my hair down my back and the taste of death in my mouth. I can’t stop shivering. I try to get wild again, but my muscles are spasming so hard that I can’t. I lurch up on all fours and then to my legs and stumble only a few steps before collapsing again, my head on my knees.
A warm coat that smells like angelica and green corn and the earth before a storm settles around my shoulders. “Put it on,” says that quiet voice, and Ti lifts me, guiding my arms into the sleeves, and then pulls me close to his even-warmer body. He says nothing, just holds me tight, letting me shiver against him.
“I killed him,” I finally stutter.
He lifts my sodden hair out from under the collar of the coat.
“Yes, you did. And if you hadn’t, he would have died in pain, and the whole Pack would have had the burden of it. Now only you do.”
Ti doesn’t say that I wasn’t responsible or that I shouldn’t feel guilty, but rather that it’s a burden worth carrying and one that I’m strong enough to bear. His faith calms me in a way that no amount of coddling ever could.
It’s one of the things I love about him.
“I can’t get the taste of blood out of my mouth.”
He doesn’t respond. I guess he didn’t hear, or knowing him, he did hear but doesn’t think there’s any point in responding. It doesn’t matter. I settle my head back on his chest and listen to his heartbeat.
Did I say love?
He frees one arm and lifts my chin. It’s dark for my poor human senses, but he’s not like me, and the nearly full moon lights up the green glow of the lucidum in his eyes.
He hesitates, his lips hovering above mine, like a boy nervously contemplating his first kiss. But I know what he’s hiding, and I stretch up as high as I can and wrap my arm around his neck, feeling the shape of his skull under the roughness of his cropped hair. I feel his mouth against mine, firm and ripe and warm and still closed.
Nuzzling the seam of his mouth. I catch his lower lip gently between my fangs, pulling him closer. I know you, Tiberius. I know the wildness that you’ve always hidden there, but I am not human, and I want the untamed, inhuman sharpness of your mouth.
I let go and lick my lip before gently circling his, my breath feathering his sensitive skin.
Finally, his lips open softly, and I seal my mouth around his, because this is his first kiss and mine too, and I am his shielder in all things. My tongue reaches into the warm, damp velvet of his mouth, gliding against his tongue, entangling it, and I sweep against the sharp tips of his canines. They are just like mine. Long and sharp and too feral, no matter how human he wants to pretend to be. His tongue flicks against mine, growing more insistent, raiding my mouth, taking and leaving me burning with the taste of bittersweet and tannin.
He picks me up, and my legs wrap around his waist, feeling the enveloping warmth of his coat swinging big and loose against my back and the hard denim-covered cock pushing fierce and tight against my front.
“Tiberius,” I whisper against his mouth. “Make me warm again.”
He walks slowly, making sure that with every step, his hard length rocks deeper against me. Bracing me against an old pine, he lets go and pushes his jeans down, until I feel him press against me, and then he presses into me, into my mouth and into my sex.
This is what I need. This is raw and visceral and primal and wild. My thighs wrap around Ti’s thrusting hips, the rough tree bark pushing up the anorak and chafing at my back, my killer’s mouth tight against his.
With all the fierce grinding and sharp teeth, one of us bleeds—maybe both—and the new blood that seeps into my mouth washes away the taste of First Blood.
Pulling away, I sweep my damp, knotted hair to the side, and Ti breathes in deeply before biting down hard enough to ensure that when he slams into me, I stay anchored and ready for him. My legs clench around his thighs, as wave after shattering wave crests through me. And when his life pulses hot and deep inside, I am finally warm again.
Chapter 21
I think Ti believes the Pack has an innate passion for hierarchies and laws and traditions. That’s not it at all. It’s that the complicated logistics of dealing with those three dumb, thumbless days force us to have all those hierarchies and laws and traditions. If it weren’t for the Iron Moon, our orbits would have tightened long ago, shedding the Pack in favor of family until eventually we whirled in a tight circle of just ourselves alone.
Then we would have become like Shifters: human except with grumpy lunar dispositions.
“You know John’s still going to be watching you.”
“I figured as much.”
“Are you really sure this is what you want to do?”
“I just can’t, Silver. I think if I spent three days as a wolf, I’d never be able to turn back.”
“Well, you better learn how, because I’m not doing this for you again.”
“Just do it, will you? Wait, not yet. The gag.”
I give Ti the thick, folded strap of clean T-shirt. As soon as he grips it between his teeth, he nods, and I bring the maul down hard on his leg.
Not sure the gag was even necessary. He doesn’t scream at all, just gives a cracked groan. A light sheen of sweat covers his face.
“I heard a snap. Do you think it worked?”
He nods, the gag still clenched tight in his jaws.
“Good. Like I said, not doing that again.”
It takes a bit of maneuvering, but I finally get Ti up. He drapes his arm over my shoulder. The sweat under his arm soaks into my shirt.
“How did you say this happened?” Tristan asks.
I explain how Ti slipped while jumping over that little gully.
&nbs
p; “The one near the bayberry?”
“No. The one where the moose was sick and we herded him to the edge, and we thought we might be able to have moose, but John made us wait to see if it got better and then it got better?”
“That was a terrible day,” Tristan says, nodding sadly. “Tragic.”
“I know.” I sigh. “Do you think we’ll ever have moose?”
“Excuse me,” Ti hisses. “My leg?”
“Oh, yes. Oblique fracture of the tibia. For anyone else, I wouldn’t set it this close to the Iron Moon, and they’d just have to deal with the pain of changing. Since you don’t have to change, I will set it. But be sure you tell John what happened.”
When I tell John, I can see in his expression that our Alpha isn’t happy about Ti spending the Iron Moon in skin when all the rest of us are wild. Tara sets up a rotation to watch him. She will also turn off the Wi-Fi, I guess so my bedfellow won’t be tempted to buy a gun on Amazon.
Windows are closed, anything that might spoil over the next three days is composted, and the propane to the stove is switched off. The start batteries and fuel levels for the emergency generators are checked, because if something happens when we’re changed, there’s not a thing we can do about it, and nobody wants the pipes to freeze.
John’s answering machine now says that he has gone to Florida to visit an ailing relative and please leave a message. Meeep.
Marco must have drawn gate duty, because he comes trotting up the path from the access road with his iPad and Elijah, whose hectic life Offland means he’s always late to Homelands. With everyone checked in, the tall barbed gate is chained. Most of the Homelands is just posted, but the mile near the access road has been fenced with a six-foot-high, razor-wire-topped chain-link. Humans will happily buck the law and hunt on our land, but we have found that forcing them to carry a two-hundred-pound carcass over a mile to their illegally parked cars has significantly reduced their numbers.
At six o’clock, we all gather at the Great Hall. Friends who haven’t seen one another for a month exchange greetings and bits of news while we strip down, putting our clothes in neat little stacks on sofas and benches and chairs.
