me time to come down from the Iron Moon, to coalesce and shove myself back into the outline of this two-legged form that is so much lonelier than being wild. John never complained about it, but he’d been Alpha longer. Trained to put his needs aside younger.
Through the open window of the Meeting House, I catch those last shirred breezes against my skin, hear the rustles of the summer canopy, smell the tangy musk of the deer leg the 8th brought for the pups. Holding on as long as I can to senses that dull with each passing moment.
Outside, Adriana bangs a sledgehammer against the dirt in the deep cleats of her boots, first one, then the other. She does it to warn the wolves inside that the Shifters are coming, as though they haven’t been loud enough slipping and tripping and falling and complaining the whole way from the dormitory.
They’ve scared off everything edible, and any wolf hoping to chase down a snack after the morning’s formalities will have to settle for a carrot muffin.
The stairs groan under their heavy steps. The largest one is moving fast. The female limps behind him, her steps having a sharp staccato like an ingrown claw. The tall one walks behind, shortening his stride to stay apace with the one who is sick.
Cassius, Julia, Constantine, and Magnus.
Cassius, the big one, falls on the table holding plates of food meant to fuel the Alphas who are missing the Iron Moon Table. He takes the lids from chafing dishes filled with eggs and barley soup and curd-cheese pastries and scones and my own favorite: hasty pudding with cream and the end of last year’s preserved gooseberries.
Probably looking for carrion, like Tiberius did when he first came. He complained steadfastly about the lack of meat until Silver explained that meat was what a wolf hunted and devoured still warm from snout to tail. Carrion, she said with no little disgust, was vacuum-packed roadkill.
Finally, he chooses something. Eggy cakes by the smell of it. Julia takes a small bowl of strawberries. She shows it first to Cassius, who raises a dewclaw. No, not dewclaw. Thumb. He raises his thumb. I bend my own against my fingers, reminding myself of the feel of its opposability.
Leonora, the Great North’s human behaviors teacher, arrives late. Something about the sick one, Magnus, attracts her attention, but before she can get closer, Constantine pivots, making his body a shield against her. He seems to have only two modes: striking or coiled to strike.
Now Leonora cups her hand to her face. Sniffing at it with a worried expression, she looks toward me, her mouth open.
“Alpha?” says Cassius, and Leonora immediately forgets her question. Cassius’s voice is now smooth and healed. The Pack looks to me for guidance, but with a quick dip of my eyes, I tell them to wait. Wolves are watchers first.
The Shifter brushes the crumbs first from his mouth and chest, then from his hands. He combs his fingers through his hair, then holds his hand out to Elijah Sorensson, Alpha of the 9th.
Elijah’s eyes shift toward me. Without turning away from the window, I lift a lip over my right canine. The prey wants to play. Play with him.
Elijah is a lawyer and spent decades Offland before coming back home this winter. It has made him a consummate practitioner of human customs, and maybe that’s what fools Cassius into thinking that the one who looks the most human, the one with neatly combed hair, with no traces of burrs, with no patches of molting fur stuck to old blood, must be in charge.
Or maybe it’s just that Elijah wears a shirt with buttons, the kind of additional obstacle to being wild that Homeland wolves have little patience for.
“Alpha?” Cassius says again, holding out his hand. “Name’s Cassius. I’m what you might call the Alpha of our merry group.”
Two of the Shifters anxiously follow Cassius’s interaction with the “Alpha,” but the fourth one, the dangerous one, watches me. He is tall enough to see even over a roomful of wolves. To make sure he’s not looking out the window, I step to the side. He doesn’t move, but his eyes track me. It’s an old Alpha trick: to watch without watching, because wolves who feel their Alpha’s gaze on them become stilted and unnatural.
Constantine is the dangerous one.
What makes you dangerous, Constantine?
I watched our “guests” during the Iron Moon. Magnus is too sick to be dangerous; Cassius, too stupid; Julia,