not me to shepherd the hunters. He’d tried that once, taking me with him to a hunt party. I’d been very young and he’d given me a knife, because he didn’t want anyone to see me use a gun. I was a kid; my job, he said, was to be “disarming.” Then one of the assholes shoots a big cat in the gut, but the guy’s tired and wants to go home. August said if I was so worried about it, I could take care of it myself, challenging me. Put up or shut up.
He didn’t like it when I came back spattered with blood.
“A real hunter”—I remember how cold his eyes went—“keeps his blade clean.” It wasn’t phrased as a command, but everything August said was a challenge or a command or a criticism to make clear who was the big man and who was small.
An orphaned child with no one else in the world, I obeyed but there was something about watching me lick the gore from that knife that made him narrow his eyes and frown. He never took me again.
I say “something” as though I don’t know exactly what disturbed August that day. It wasn’t the bravado or the defiance, both of which he could understand.
What bothered him was that I had enjoyed it.
And I enjoy it now: wedged in between furred and powerful bodies, taking still-warm life from this death that we created together.
Once the echelon has taken what we want, the Alpha calls for other members of the Pack to come for any scraps. Ziggy noses around the blood at my chest, his long tongue lapping firmly but gently at the gash, but I stumble back, my lips pulled away from my sharp teeth, a growl rumbling from my throat.
Circling round and round, the 7th lie down, some alone in a tight circle, but more in scattered piles, chuffing and huffing as they pillow their heads on the legs or backs or distended bellies of their packmates.
Evie finishes grooming her muzzle with her front paw, then she stretches back into her haunches and, after one luxurious shake, throws her head back and begins the low resonant howl of evening call. Her ears circle, catching the responses of her Pack floating over the contours of the mountains and valleys, skimming streams and ponds. Only when she is sure that the Great North is safe does she stop, turn around three times, and lie down.
And only then do I lie down a few feet away, full and content.
I have killed for bacon.
Chapter 27
Evie
Constantine clings to the walls of the Great Hall like a gecko.
Even for me, the end of the Iron Moon is hard. It means losing the lightness and connection to the world that comes with being wild. Ears clogged, eyes unfocused, nose dulled, limbs sluggish, head heavy, and torso unbalanced on top of long legs, it’s like walking on stilts through mud.
“That wasn’t three days,” he’d said as he’d struggled into his clothes. It never feels like it since there is no schedule and time is defined by the length of a hunt or measures of a howl. Especially now when the canopy is so thick that the sunlight that struggles through in mottled specks seems barely brighter than moonlight.
After checking on preparations for the Iron Moon Table, that one time when the whole Pack comes together with thumbs and words, I head outside. Constantine’s made it no farther than the corner of the Great Hall. He leans against a log end, watching Silver.
She sits in front of the three birches that burned the night the Shifters came to the Great Hall. The bark bubbled brown around the edge of blackened wood, but I would not have them cut down until spring came and we would know whether they survived. They did and put out bright-green leaves and stand here scarred and resilient, just like the Great North.
“Gehyrað,” Silver says. “Listen.”
I turn the gray weathered Adirondack chair to the corner to watch.
The pups who’d been running around Silver stop, their heads bending from side to side, questioning. One of the First Shoes has frozen her bare foot behind her head as she tries to scratch behind her jaw. Another, curled next to his packmate on the grass, stops his gentle gnawing on the other’s little, hairless, shell-like ear. There’s always a certain amount of backsliding after the Iron Moon.
“Gehyrað,” Silver says again, this time cupping her hand behind her ear.
A few adults have gathered