His eyes lock on mine, and he slowly moves his hand to his knee so I can see that he’s not touching the gun.
I creep close, starting with the wound. He has been clawed and not by one wolf; I can make out at least three different scents. They circled him and came at him from different directions.
For us, only the most heinous crimes warrant a disemboweling. But the Slitung, flesh-tearing, is a solemn ritual, not butchery. Every muzzle must be bloodied, so the tragedy of a life that we have failed is borne by all.
This man may not look it, but he is extraordinarily lucky. There is damage to the fascia and muscles, and while there is blood—and a lot of it—there is not the distinctive smell of a gut wound. Those things are hard to repair and go septic quickly.
Lifting my nose to the spot behind his ear, I almost gag at the overwhelming human smell of steel and death. But before I recoil, I catch the scent of something else. Snorting out air to get a clear hit, I try again. It’s faint but it’s here—crushed bone and evergreen—and it’s wild.
There’s only one creature in the world that smells both human and wild, and it is the creature we fear most.
Shifters are like us, but not. We can all of us change. But we cannot always change back. We are the children of the Iron Moon, and for three days out of thirty, we must be as we are now. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing—putting coolant in the backup generator, coming back late on the Grand Isle ferry (retrieving the car required some explaining)—Death and the Iron Moon wait for no wolf.
It is our great strength and our great weakness. We depend on one another. We support one another. Without the Pack, we are feral strays, trapped in a human world without words or opposable thumbs.
Shifters can always shift. They are opportunists. They used to change back and forth as it suited them, but now that humans are top predator, it suits them to be human. Like humans, they are narcissistic, self-delusional, and greedy. But they can scent things that humans can’t, and they are dangerous hunters.
They know what we are, and in these past centuries, our numbers have been decimated by Shifters coming upon a Pack during the Iron Moon and slaughtering us with their human weapons.
There is something else, though, about this Shifter’s deeply buried wild. Something more familiar than simply wolf. Moving close to where the scent is most concentrated, I suck in a deep breath.
“Found something you like?”
Snarling, I back awkwardly away from his crotch, but moving backward at a crouch makes my bad leg turn under, and the pain tears through my hip. Bone grinds against bone, and I stumble.
“A runt and a cripple?”
I flash my fangs at him. I may be a runt and a cripple, but I am still a wolf, damn it. John and Solveig and Demos sniff at my muzzle and immediately know what I know. Ears flatten, fur bristles, forefeet are planted, haunches bend under, and a menacing rumble spreads through powerful chests.
“Yes, my father is Shifter, but my mother is…was…Pack-born. Mala Imanisdottir.”
I knew it. I knew he smelled familiar. John sniffs my muzzle again, scenting for proof of his ancestry.
“I challenged our leader, and I lost. I escaped his first attempt to kill me, but I won’t escape another.” His mind seems to wander, and then, with a real effort, he focuses again. “My father told me to escape. Find you. You are my last chance.”
John looks out across his Pack, now bolstered with the older echelons. He snaps at the air over one shoulder and orders the Pack home. Mala or no Mala, this is the Great North Pack, not a sanctuary. The enormous Shifter will bleed out, eaten by the coyotes who even now are signaling to each other that there is something big and dying. They won’t come near us, but as soon as we are gone, they will move in.
Solveig growls softly, calling me to heel. I hadn’t realized how far ahead they had gotten. I stumble after her with my tail between my legs.
“The runt,” the man calls between panted breaths. “She’s not mated?”
Without turning, John stops.
“My mother said that the Pack would accept a lone wolf if there was another willing lone wolf.” A short cough tightens his face in pain. “She told my father,” he says. His skin is graying, and the circles beneath his eyes are so dark. “Before she died. She told my father.”
There is some truth in what the Shifter says. Some. Unfortunately, none of us has the paper, the pencil, the voices, or the hands to sit him down and explain the complexities.
John motions me toward him and rests his head on my shoulders. He’s so huge and comforting. His smell is the smell of home, and I can’t imagine not being surrounded by him. He represents protection from the outside and order at home.
He butts me lightly with his nose. The stranger doesn’t know the complexities, but I certainly do. The choice is mine. If I return with my Pack, the stranger will die and I will be a nidling. As low as it is, I will have my place within the Pack.
But if I stay…
Then I am gambling that this Shifter and I are strong enough to fight for—and win—a full place in the Pack. It is a gamble, though, because if we can’t, both of us are exiled. He will be no worse off, but I will careen from bad decision to bad decision, ending up in the same damn puddle of blood and/or vomit as Ronan.
The enormous Shifter weaves in our midst. I run back and sniff at him. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he looks really strong, and with a little help, he should make it. He lifts his head, and for the first time, I see his face. He’s darker than John’s mate, Evie, but where her eyes are pure black, his are black shot through with shards of gold.
He whispers something that even my sensitive ears must strain to catch.
“Runt?” he murmurs. “I don’t want to die.” Then he collapses into the grass.
The Pack is already filtering out of the Clearing. Demos gives a curious sniff of the prone body and snarls. He swings his fat head, hitting my backside, telling me to get a move on.
Maybe if he hadn’t done that, I’d have crouched down and followed. This is my world, and the Pack is my life, but I haven’t put this much work into surviving only to spend the rest of my life obeying every snarky whim of a thuggish half-wit like Eudemos.
I nip at his ear, the universally understood signal—at least among Pack, it’s universally understood—to go fuck yourself. I shake out my back and straighten my tail and walk as tall as I can back to the Shifter. I lay my head across his shoulder.
John takes one look along his flank and starts to run. The Pack follows quickly until they are nothing but the occasional flicker of fur among the spruce.
Except for the low, slow plaintive cry of the loon on Clear Pond, it is silent. Then comes the reverberating howl signaling that John is home. The wolves stationed at the perimeter take up the howl.