wolves like the way it smells.”
Would he approve of it now? Now that the ash smell of the hall the Shifters burned is gone. Now that the whole Pack could gather together. Now that it is tall enough for adult wolves to stand without cracking their heads on dormers. Now that it is big enough for them to move about without knocking over lamps in cramped rooms.
“Alpha.” Joelle, Gamma of the 10th, stands at the entrance to the Alpha’s office—my office—shaking out a sheaf of multicolored papers.
The requirements of the Iron Moon—disciplining an echelon, helping with a hunt, teaching a juvenile—are so radiantly clear and necessary.
In skin, the requirements of an Alpha are tedious and in triplicate.
“Do it again without the two-by-fours.” I pass the purchase order back and run through the work schedule in my mind. “Send the 4th and 8th and 13th to take what the Shifters left on the lands north. Whatever we can use. There is good wood there.”
Trevor approaches to ask about next year’s education plan, and I search through a canvas bag for the sheaf of papers bristling with multicolored stickies. I’d almost finished, but then came the time when I lost the fingers and thumbs I would need to hold a highlighter.
When Lorcan, Eudemos, and Elijah come, they join Trevor next to the open window, tasting the news on the air, while I finish my paperwork.
What happened to the Transcendentalism class? John taught Thoreau and Emerson and Whitman. I will not have that gone. I finish writing in the margins of the teaching plan and hand it back to Trevor. Tara’s claws click on the front stairs.
Elijah cranes his head to look through the door. “They’re coming.”
Heavy footsteps oblivious to everything thud up the stairs, and the front door opens.
“Take off your shoes!” shouts one of the juveniles who had been sweeping the floor.
Tara stops in front of my office and bends her head toward the mudroom.
We wait, my foot tapping impatiently on the floor.
How long does it take to take off shoes?
“Did anyone check the Spruce Flats?”
“Poul did,” Lorcan says. “The bodies are still there. The coyotes aren’t eating them. The deer who fled the land to the north have made the coyotes picky.”
“And the dog?”
“Not the dog either.” Lorcan’s chin droops down to his chest. He had called Victor Deemer, as we all had. And when Victor had used the excuse of Elijah’s human mate to divide the Pack, Lorcan had followed him, as had so many of the younger echelons. Then he discovered that Victor intended to replace me and hand over the Great North to August. Now Lorcan cannot look me in the eye.
The smell of steel and carrion wafts down the hall followed by the loud tread of the Shifters who stink of it.
“Lorcan,” I say to the bright-pink line of his scalp at the part of his hair. “Wolves do not have the luxury of regret. Cum, agna in rihtum.”
Come, claim your right.
And Lorcan, broad and powerful, bolts for me like a pup, his eyes wide with the fear of loss and the need for belonging that only the Alpha, the symbol of Pack unity, can give. Slowly, slowly, I pull the strands of hair away from his face so nothing will come between his skin and mine. I rub one cheek against his, then repeat it on the other side.
The Shifters stand watching at the door, but I will not hurry Lorcan as he takes my scent. He has spent the whole moon angry that he allowed Victor to mislead him, fearful of losing his connection to the Pack. I give him the time he needs to breathe in that belonging again, and when he is done, his head is higher. As soon as I am done with the Shifters, I will mark again all the wolves of the echelons misled by the traitorous dog.
I have decided to divide the Shifters among the Alphas I trust the most, so Julia will go to Lorcan; Elijah will have to handle Cassius, who after all his loud complaining stands oddly silent, glaring into the distance. Julia, who had said almost nothing, now pleads incoherently, holding out her red and ridiculous shoes to Cassius’s retreating back as though they are explanation of something. Lorcan takes her wrist and pulls her toward the door, still endlessly babbling sorry, sorry, sorry.
“I’m sorry. I don’t belong here. I’m sorry, Cass. I don’t know why. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was