Chapter 1 #2
Leave earlier, my frosty mother suggested the last time I pointed that out. Or are you too addicted to making a spectacle of yourself?
That’s Johanna Hemming for you. She never bothers to lift a claw when she can use her words instead. But all of that is pack shit, and given that I’m about to walk into the greatest possible expression of pack shit there is, I need to make sure I remember to tell Ty what I saw out here.
When he’s in the mood to listen to me again, that is. After the full moon it usually takes him a minute.
But now that I think about it, the way the skunk was ripped apart and splayed open reminds me a little of that black magic crap that the death goddess’s freaky minions liked to play with. All those blood sacrifices and ponderous rituals that they found so important in the run-up to Halloween.
It reminds me of them—but they should be gone. Like she is.
Like she’s supposed to be.
It’s easier to be a wolf. You chase or are chased. You eat or are eaten. Tooth and claw, howl and hunt—wolves are simple creatures, really. Even wolves with too many ideas, like me.
This is what I tell myself as I make it to the old mine’s entrance. It looks like a ruined, run-down piece of shit, the way it’s supposed to. A derelict, blackened structure that should have fallen to pieces years ago and might still, at any moment.
I walk to the front door, or what’s left of it, and make my way into the unappealing rooms within. Debris is strewn about, looking dirty and even a little dangerous. It looks like fires have been stamped out, questionable parties thrown, and there’s even graffiti on the walls.
All lies, of course. Smoke and mirrors.
Any creature that dares to spend any time between these walls uninvited never leaves again. Wolves take territory seriously.
On the other side of the creaky, treacherous wood floor, I open another door and I’m outside again, in the narrow space between the godforsaken old house and the hill behind it. The old mineshaft is still propped up overhead, defying gravity with every passing second.
I don’t look around for the sentries I know are watching me. I don’t need to, because they make sure that I can hear them growling as I saunter by. My special little greeting from my people, so sweet.
I give them the finger and a little smile for good measure, and then, between two giant rocks that make it look as if nothing could be behind them but more rock, I slip into the shadow that is really an opening and enter the den itself.
Legend has it that the first wolves built our cave system long before the miners showed up. Then they watched and waited as the rude, foolish humans built the pack a perfect little camouflage. As a thank-you, the wolves ate the whole mining company. A celebratory snack.
We tell our young this story around the fires when we gather, embellishing it more and more each time, so that a little wolfling might labor under the impression that “miner” is another word for “meat.” Something that does not go over well in human public schools, as I know from experience.
As I navigate my way into the narrow passage, deliberately unlit, I can already hear the howling and the barking from up above, high on the top of this hill that is too treacherous for anyone to climb without four legs and the sort of supernatural athleticism werewolves are all born with.
It’s all sheer rock and treacherous crevasses. It keeps us safe. It keeps us hidden.
It also keeps us in the Stone Age, but no one likes it when I say that.
I can smell roast meat, venison if I’m not mistaken, because on full moon night there’s always a feast. For those who run, but also for those who need to stay behind.
The old and infirm. The pregnant females.
The young. I can hear the drums from up above.
Down here, there’s music. Wolves love a full moon party.
I used to myself, before I was old enough to understand what it would mean for me.
The caves roll out in all directions, covering miles beneath the lush Oregon wilderness, but the main cavern is where we come together. This is where blood werewolves operate our tight community and raise our families, exactly the way we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.
Wolves live a long time. And they don’t like change.
I keep finding this out the hard way.
Inside the main cavern I see the very young, the very old, and the very, very pregnant sitting on the many couches and lying on the floor.
In case I’m tempted to think it’s only the more active members of the pack who resent me, the moment I step inside and everyone scents my presence, I can hear a little more of that quiet growling.
Not loud growling. Nothing aggressive. No one would actually come for me. No one would dare mess with something that’s Ty’s. They’re just sending a message, like their version of an artistically eviscerated skunk.
I was born the long-awaited mate to the king himself, because that’s how it goes in werewolf packs.
Every king gets a fated mate. If he doesn’t, he’s not a real king, though there’s usually a century or so of leeway on that.
If she dies, he sometimes gets another. If you believe the myths, it’s the moon who makes these decisions as it suits her, letting the males fight to the death for their position and then presenting winners with a worthy female to stand by their side, produce their young, and keep the den in line while the males are away.
They knew I was coming before I arrived. They could scent me on the wind.
But then they got me.
Expectations are a bitch.
I nod at the old ones, because it’s never a weakness to show respect, especially if they’re already not pleased with me.
I smile at the little cubs who are tumbling around, switching in and out of their forms as they go, roughhousing it up with abandon.
And I nod my head at the pregnant females—trying to make it clear that not wanting to become just like them doesn’t mean that I think I’m better than them, just different.
I can see they don’t believe it.
I greet them all, but I don’t stop. I keep going and I climb the stairs that wind around the cavern walls and lead to a door near the top.
This, too, would be easier on four legs, but I can’t risk it.
Two months ago I came much too close to losing my head on a different mountain, Ty and me in wolf form and that moon madness gripping me hard—
Luckily, that night there was that terrible, bloody ritual, horrible death goddess minions to fight, and the new local oracle—my friend and landlord Winter Bishop—to try to save. Enough distractions that I didn’t forget myself.
Better to stay in skin tonight.
I push my way through the door. It opens onto the top of the hill, where we gather for the moon every month. The moon that makes us and marks us. The moon that guides us and watches us.
The moon who does with us as she will.
It’s loud out here, and for a moment I stand near the jagged rocks that hide this upper entrance to the caves below.
My pack is spread out all over the hilltop, basking in the moonlight and the cool night air.
There’s a part of me that loves this place and these people.
Exactly as it is right now. The laughter. The carousing. The pack of it all.
This is where I grew up. This is where I played as a cub. These caves are where I slowly came to understand that Ty Ceridwen, so golden and powerful, and nothing short of astonishing even to a child, was mine.
These are my people, rough and wild.
Before the Reveal, Ty and his lieutenants—some of those being my brothers and cousins, and no, they don’t support me, because loyalty to Ty and to pack comes first—hid in plain sight out there in the human world.
They were outlaw bikers, causing a commotion wherever they went.
They fought. They did their share of carousing.
They involved themselves in all manner of things, most of it what humans consider shady.
Then again, it was only ever the human biker gangs who got caught and thrown in prisons.
Wolves have bigger teeth.
Out in the human world, they all looked like big, powerful men with tattoos and bad attitudes, alarmingly afraid of nothing at all. They liked loud Harleys, easy sex, and the ability to do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever the hell they wanted to do it.
They still do.
Back then they also ran protection for various not-exactly-legal industries all up and down the West Coast, from the ocean to the Rockies.
Now it doesn’t matter much what’s legal, because there’s no one around to do anything about it.
After the Reveal, while many other creatures were enjoying the all-you-can-eat buffet that was suddenly on hand everywhere, the wolves were thinking ahead.
Or Ty was. He wasn’t thinking about stuffing his face like everyone else. He was thinking about supply chains.
He’s the reason there’s food in the valley, along with most other conveniences that not only humans rely on.
Him and the relationship he built with a few manky creek-side mages out in Eagle Point.
He’s also why other pockets of wolves across the continent are similarly positioned to weather whatever storms might come in their areas, though he couldn’t do that himself.
He could only share what he’d done out here with the rest of the packs.
North America is divided into pack territories.
It’s only in the past fifty years or so that these packs have stopped trying to murder each other and have maintained a peace treaty.
This isn’t just so that wolves can trot around, howling at the moon without having to fight over where they’re doing it.
It’s also because werewolves like power.
Money before the Reveal, control after, and more of both if we’re not at war with ourselves.
No one’s better at this than Ty, but that’s another point of contention between us.