We were inevitable: the two strongest wolves doing what was expected of the strongest wolves since Pack first left the Ironwood.
The thing I miss most of all is the utter lack of doubt that was his inheritance. John was descended from wolves who’d spent 350 years coddled by Homelands’ sanctuary. I am not. I have known doubt and I have known fear. The fear of making a decision, the fear of being wrong, the fear of others paying the price, the fear of being the last Alpha of the last pack of the last wolves.
Wait… Is that it? Sitting upright, I focus my attention on the gap between the High Pines and Westdæl and the sound coming up a distant road, like the whine of giant mosquitoes.
“What is it?”
I’ve forgotten the name of the machine.
“It’s, umm…” I rotate both fists forward in the air.
“ATVs?”
“Yes, ATVs. They like to drive them in the mud of the land up north. They come now and ride around at night, but they are very loud and they worry V…the Gray. The forever wolves.” My voice hitches. “I want them gone.”
He looks toward Westdæl, running his fingers through his hair. Strand by strand, he plucks away a stick, a seed, a leaf, a needle, a burr, until all the traces of the Grenemann are gone.
Don’t.
But I don’t stop him, because I know he was the one who tore the north lands apart, and all the sticks and stems and seeds and samaras in the world will not turn him into a fierce protector of the forest.
“Alpha,” he starts, pauses, then starts again. “That land was muddy before we cleared the trees, but afterward, it became almost impassable. We had to put in culverts and drains or we wouldn’t have been able to get in. I know where they are—the culverts—and if we took them out, used them to block the access roads, I would bet it’d become impassable again.”
Somewhere high in the icy ether, an invisible airplane leaves contrails across the starlit sky.
“You’re not going to escape.”
He shrugs. “What’s the point of escaping if I don’t have some place to escape to? I’ve crossed hundreds of borders working for August so I know it takes more than crossing borders to make a man free.”
It’s hard for me to even imagine what it’s like crossing hundreds of borders. This is my place. Wolves don’t travel more than a day’s drive from pack territory, but it makes the Pack nervous if the Alpha is away too long, which means I’ve rarely been farther than Plattsburgh.
“Do you miss her?” he suddenly asks.
“Who?”
“Varya.”
“Of course not. She is still here.” I brush my hands against my jeans; Francesca and Lorin are probably waiting for me already. “And still as much a member of the Great North as she was when I could talk to her.”
Constantine pushes himself off the ground, his back scraping up against the tree. He holds out his hand to me, but I don’t need his help. Coiling the muscles in my thighs, I raise myself with no help from ground or tree or Shifter.
He stays with his hand extended when a light breeze rolls down from Westdæl, blowing his hair across his cheekbone. A scent that I would have caught easily if I’d been wild is hard to make out with this nose. It is faint and muddied by the fading carrion and steel and burned-over ash. Without thinking, I move closer and breathe in deeply and remember the winter we ate too many deer and the spring when the undergrowth grew unchecked and the dry summer when the hiker made a fire with cottonwood that sparked and snapped.
We didn’t tell him “Stop” because we couldn’t. We just ran for our lives, followed by everything that was fast enough and the cries of everything that wasn’t.
Eventually, the fire ended and the rains started, and not long after, tiny mounds of bright green sprouted tender and tentative on the puddled gray earth, the smell of water and green life and resilience and hope.
He doesn’t move as I breathe it in again and again until that sound like a giant mosquito whines louder and reverberates through the gap between the High Pines and Westdæl. Even Constantine hears it. I know because I feel his stubbled jaw brush against my cheek as he turns to listen.
“Let me help,” he whispers next to my ear. “If not for you, for Varya.”
In the night, the bright-green streaks of his eyes fade