What a waste.
A murmur roiled the Pack, alerting Ælfrida to the faint scent of wolf. Even with her poor human nose, she recognized it instantly, running it down until she came to the end of the dock where the Assurance’s captain stood yelling at a small woman seated with her legs over the side of the dock, her arms clenched around the harness of a dog cart, piled with three large chests.
Seolfer was weaving slightly, staring at the blood falling from her leg into the water in rapidly dissipating gusts. The little nidling looked up with difficulty, her eyes barely focused in her pale face. “The guards shot them during the change. Clubbed them. Cut off their heads and stove them onto the branches of our trees. Bleeding into our earth. They are right now tearing up our land, looking for money. But I have them all, Alpha. I have them all.”
Ælfrida breathed in deep and said a silent prayer of thanks to the pale remnants of the daylit waning moon. She yelled for her Delta, the one she’d sent to Glasgow to study medicine.
“This is Seolfer,” she said. “Heal her.”
Untying the rag around the woman’s calf, the doctor frowned. “Alpha, the ball is lodged in her tibia, and she has lost a great deal of blood. It is doubtful she will survive and sure that she will lose her leg.” He shook his head sadly.
“Do not wag your head at me.” Ælfrida bent down, one strong hand clenched around his jaw. “You will do what I tell you, and she will live.”
“Then what?” Ælfrida’s Beta yelled from the back where he’d been serving as rear guard. “Are we to embark on this foolishness saddled by a crippled runt who is not even of Mercia?”
It is not in the nature of a Pack to accept change quietly. Mercia’s wolves had not seen what she had. While she had visited the Packs, they had dug holes in the dirt and eaten rats, which had done little to improve their disposition.
Ælfrida bolted through the Pack, straight for the enormous male. She hadn’t eaten enough for months, but there was a reason she was Alpha, and every muscle tightened in explosive anticipation. Her lungs expanded as she plowed her struggling Beta to the edge of the dock and then threw him into the disgusting murky water lapping against the quay.
She glared at the rest of her Pack, every tendon and bone wanting to shift. Her shoulders curved high behind her lowered head. Her teeth needed to tear into muzzles; her fingers ached to claw at flanks.
“Your Alpha,” she growled, her body heaving, “says that this woman and these chests are Mercia now.”
She might have been weakened by the long, slow hunger, but one by one, her Pack dropped their eyes and submitted.
“You,” she barked at the goggle-eyed captain of the Assurance, who was staring at her huge Beta flailing in the water. “Fish him out.”
She left two wolves to help the captain and two more to help the doctor. Then she commanded the rest of the Pack to carry the chests to the hold. “Gently, gently. Don’t jostle them.” She sent Halwende, the Pack’s single juvenile, for as much water as he could carry.
“Hurry,” she whispered as soon as they were in the hold, away from the humans. She couldn’t keep the anticipation and dread from her voice. Fastened only with sticks, the chests opened easily, and her heart clenched in her throat. The Pack gathered around the boxes smelling of piss and terror, and one by one they picked up the silent, cringing pups, cradling them against the warmth of their bodies. They gave them water from their cupped hands and stroked their fur and rubbed faces against muzzles to mark them.
And for the first time in many years, Ælfrida, the last Alpha of the Great Pack of Mercia, allowed herself to feel hope.
“Be sure to wash them well,” she said, more softly now. She would not have the pups coming to the New World smelling of the corruption and death of the old.
Unfortunately, Ælfrida had one last thing to do to make sure her Pack could leave safely. It was a shitty job, but that’s what it meant to be Alpha.
She’d seen the Shifter lingering near the dock and walked until she found his scent and tracked him to a nearby tavern. He seemed no more surprised to see Ælfrida than she was to see him. He was, he said, devastated that the human guards had betrayed Wulfric. Humans, he said, had no sense of honor, of a promise made and kept. But he could not bear life as a lone wolf, he said, and would serve her in whatever way she needed in return for a place in the Pack.
He never mentioned Seolfer or the three great chests that he had tracked to Portsmouth. Nor did he mention the pistol he carried, though the scent of gunpowder was tart in Ælfrida’s nose.
Ælfrida watched a young human woman, barely out of girlhood, smile at a customer and saw the customer’s body relax. When the girl touched his arm, he leaned forward, his scent becoming suddenly receptive. Ælfrida turned to the Shifter and gave him the same barmaid smile and the same barmaid touch, and his scent became musky. The blandishments that Ælfrida presumed he had used on poor Wulfric he now used on her, along with his fingers and palm. Finally, they went to one of the back rooms. “To formalize things,” he said archly.
* * *
“If you’re going to puke, puke leeward,” the captain of the Assurance had said, muttering something impertinent.
Ælfrida was beyond caring about impertinence. She leaned over the rail he had pointed to, and as she started to vomit once more, she called upon the moon to witness that as long as she lived, she would never eat Shifter again.
Chapter 1
Upstate New York, 2018
Wolves who drink smell like Baileys and kibble.
It doesn’t matter that Ronan’s poison is a 7 and 7 and chimichangas at the casino over at Hogansburg, there’s something about our livers that still makes him smell like Baileys and kibble.
He lies slumped partly on his stomach, partly on his side at the edge of the Clearing, the broad expanse of spongy grass and drowned trees that is what remains of an old beaver pond that fell into disrepair when the Pack ate the beavers one lean year. New beavers have established a new pond nearby. Eventually we will eat those too.
And so it goes.
The Clearing is used for ceremonies and rituals because it is open and accommodates larger numbers. Usually the Pack prefers the cool, muffled, fragrant darkness of the forest, treating the Clearing like an anxious Catholic treats the church. We shuffle in on major celebrations and otherwise give it a wide berth.
The Dæling, which I suppose translates most conveniently as “Dealing,” is one of those celebrations. It marks the transition of our age group, our echelon, from juvenile to adult. Here, we are paired off, not as mates yet, but in practice couplings. We will also have our own Alpha who answers only to the Pack Alpha and is responsible for keeping our echelon in line. The whole hierarchy will be set up. Not that it’s permanent or anything, more like the start times assigned before the lengthy competition that is Pack life.