littermate?” Even Leonora seems uncertain about her interpretation.
“And this is a thing?”
“Humans put great importance on blood lineage regardless of suitability.”
“But if it’s about blood lineage, then why is ‘the girl’ not the new Alpha?” I indicate a spot behind Leonora’s jaw. Owl blood.
Leonora pauses in her cleaning to shoot a questioning look over her mirror at Cassius.
“Well, because she’s…” Cassius starts.
“Yes?”
“Because she’s not interested, that’s why. She doesn’t know anything about import and export and stuff like that. Fuck, she doesn’t know how many grams are in a kilo. And she doesn’t want to know. Right, baby?”
Julia nods without looking up from the slow process of chipping away the nail polish on her thumb. I’m not sure she heard the question, just that Cassius has said something to her that requires an affirmative.
The screen door opens. I can’t see who it is over the heads of the Alphas, but as soon as I see the big wolves jump away, I know it’s Silver. Silver who was born a runt and stayed a runt, but it doesn’t stop her from pushing her way through with that rolling gait that is wild even in skin.
I have known Silver since she was ripped tiny and weak from her dam’s belly. Packs have no tolerance for weakness, and not only is she a runt, but her leg curls tight against her torso when she is wild. Still, there is no one in the Great North who is stronger of marrow or who loves the land, the Pack, and the wild more. No one who knows our stories and our laws better.
So when our last lawgiver betrayed the Pack, I called her to be Deemer. Her role is to clarify, arbitrate, mediate, and finally to offer a decision to the Pack.
Respect for the law starts young and continues. This morning, too, we started the Iron Moon Table, that one time when wolves are all together and in skin, with the familiar call and response.
In our laws are we protected.
And in lawlessness are we destroyed.
They’ve been through a lot, the Great North, and maybe it would have been better to choose a bigger wolf as Deemer. Someone with strength and size to handle the anxiety and skittishness that can make wolves hard to control.
Too late. An Alpha cannot afford even the appearance of doubt, so I school my face to confidence, staring unseeing into the middle distance as though there is no chance that the Alphas of the various echelons will fail to offer Silver the deference due her position.
Most lower their eyes, though Poul, Alpha of the 10th, hesitates. I pray to the moon that I have not made a mistake and that Silver is not too young or too weak to fight for herself, but I feel my body tighten, already preparing to enforce my decision in case she can’t.
Silver leaps, scrabbling past other wolves, her silver hair tangled with burrs and dried grasses, a cut on her forehead, her upper lip curled back from fangs that are too feral and long and sharp ever to be mistaken for human.
A low, long rumble runs through her chest, Poul bows his head, and I finally exhale.
“Deemer,” I ask. “Does the law allow us to kill the Shifters?”
The tall Shifter’s eyes flit to the door, to the wolves closest to it, to their seaxs, to the sick young man behind him. Maybe he could get some distance, but not with Magnus. And while I believe Cassius would leave his bedfellow, everything that I saw over the Iron Moon made me think that Constantine would not abandon Magnus.
Besides, I watched them. Not a single one knows how to read the forest.
“If they are not a direct threat,” Silver says, “we cannot by law kill them.”
“Thank god for small favors,” Cassius snaps.
Wolves say what they mean and find human things like irony and facetiousness difficult to understand. Still, Silver seems to grasp that Cassius is not offering up thanks to his deity. She moves toward him, standing close, her eyes unyielding.
“Unless, of course, we eat them,” she says and sucks at her front fang.
Cassius moves closer, and though he is taller and larger by far, Silver does not back down.
“Bite me, bitch,” he says, and because wolves say what they mean, Silver does.
Before he finishes drawing his fist back, I pin him to the wall, his feet dangling in the air, clawing at my forearm pressed under his chin, so that now this Shifter will have no