Chapter 8
Cold Moon, waning crescent
Still dazed with sleep and not entirely sure if I’m dreaming or not, I throw open the door to my cottage to find about five wolves—none of them members of my pack—milling around in the front yard.
Another breath, and I recognize them. Scent helps lock it in.
It would be polite to shift into my wolf form. I don’t.
I lean against the doorframe instead, cross my arms like I’m bored instead of unpleasantly jolted awake, and wait for the howling to stop.
But they’re clearly here to make a point, so that takes a minute.
When it finally dies down—a good five minutes later, which is a long time for them to be making such a ruckus in someone else’s territory—the biggest wolf sits there, regarding me cannily.
I return the favor. I can see that there’s more salt than pepper on his snout these days.
His fur is not as lustrously black as it was five years ago.
“Little bit of a brash greeting, McCaffrey,” I point out, mildly.
Very mildly, so I can’t be accused of aggression.
“First of all, you’re very early for the gathering.
Did you not know it starts a week from now?
” Of course he knew. He doesn’t respond to that, so I keep on.
“Second of all, who takes up battle howling in someone else’s yard? ”
He shifts and then he’s there before me in his human form, the stocky, belligerent leader of the New England pack.
Not my biggest fan.
“This is not a den,” he says, and then makes a big show of looking all around, as if he expects to see a whole wolf den appear from the forest. “If I had to guess, I’d say that this looks a lot like a place where humans live. Did you sleep here last night, Maddox? With humans?”
Hard to say if he’s accusing me of oversympathizing with humans in general, sleeping with one specifically, or just being a shitty wolf. Probably all of the above and more, so I don’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.
Another wolf shifts behind him, because of course she does. It’s McCaffrey’s sanctimonious queen, who I privately refer to not as Deirdre, mother to the New England pack, but Deirdre, the poor, surrendered wife.
She keeps her head piously bowed and remains a full body length behind McCaffrey.
She folds her hands demurely in front of her, the very picture of mated submission.
That she’s beautiful is no surprise. Once female wolves hit about fifty years, they only get better.
Deirdre embodies that rangy, lupine glory that all the little wolfing girls aspire to.
Ten years ago, I’d aspired to be exactly like the gorgeous, elegantly fierce Deirdre.
Then I met her.
These days, fully grown, I can’t stand Deirdre.
Not because she surrendered, because hey, we all make the choices that make sense to us.
It’s because she’s so deeply snotty about it.
In rooms where only women are present, she makes no bones about the fact that the performance of perfect queenly submission is a competition.
One she intends to win. In every possible arena.
Weird, I said during a meeting of all the queens and fated queens at the last gathering five years ago. I thought the role of a queen was to support her pack in a way that brought glory to the pack itself, and particularly her king, but you do you.
I fear that Deirdre and I were never destined to be friends.
Still, I’m aware that right now, McCaffrey himself is the bigger threat. Going down a rabbit hole of interpersonal queen issues is probably what they want, so I’m not going to let that happen.
I smile at McCaffrey instead. I don’t answer his questions.
There are a whole host of things that McCaffrey doesn’t like about me.
That I look at him directly. That Ty has given me enough rope to hang myself with, or so McCaffrey claims, when what he’s really worried about is that I might provide an alternate route for other queens to take.
And then what would domineering wolves like McCaffrey do?
They like things the way they are. The way they’ve always been.
They see any hint of change as a personal assault.
“Welcome to Oregon,” I say. I smile wider. “Have you been here before? If so, it was before my time. I hope you’ll enjoy our wild forests. These gorgeous mountains. I don’t believe you have their equal back east but I’ll admit, I’m biased.”
“Where is your king?” McCaffrey asks. He makes a show of taking a deep, heavy, scenting breath.
And then a bigger show of blinking around in astonishment, like he’s on a stage.
“You don’t smell appropriately mated, Maddox.
Has the king finally tired of your insolence and chosen a more biddable, deserving queen?
Is that why you live here like a human, exiled from your people? ”
I shake my head like he’s being silly. “If you think I’m in exile, why would you take the trouble to hunt me down?”
Then I laugh like I’m being silly, because I can’t actually get in fights with other pack leaders. Not because I don’t want to, and not because Ty would object. He doesn’t like McCaffrey either. He would probably egg me on if he was here, but it’s a good thing he’s not. It’s not good politics.
And there’s nothing about wolf week that isn’t political.
Including what McCaffrey’s doing right now.
Turning up a week early and flinging accusations around.
He almost certainly intends to turn them into rumors he can flood all the other packs with.
To create dissension in the ranks. To make the nearly untouchable and invulnerable Ty look like a weak leader.
Textbook, really.
“Our den is hard to find,” I continue merrily. “I’ll be happy to lead you over there. And I hope you’ll tell Ty how difficult it was for you to locate it. We do take pride in that.”
I congratulate myself on subtly insulting him on his inability to find his way to our den—which I’m sure he could locate easily if he hadn’t come here to harass me—while dressing it up like a compliment.
Much more deftly handled than him accusing me of being in exile because I’m staying in this cottage. This isn’t to say that I’ve won.
Still, McCaffrey and I look at each other, and we both know what happened.
“Again,” he grits out, “what I fail to understand—”
But there are suddenly even more wolves in the yard, with hackles raised and loud cries, as my pack finally makes an appearance. As the so-called patrol that would have heard all that howling the same as I did finally comes to see what’s going on.
It doesn’t sit right with me.
Even if we hadn’t had our little meeting last night—or earlier this morning—about the weird things going on around here, I don’t think that I would have appreciated how long it took for my supposed guards to make an appearance.
I especially don’t like it when I see that one of them is my cousin Beaudry.
He bares his teeth at McCaffrey, as well he should.
But he certainly doesn’t look like he rushed here.
“Took you long enough,” I mutter, as the other wolves are busy barking and showing their teeth and doing all the other things wolves do to indicate that they’re the toughest of them all. “I guess I’m glad it wasn’t a real attack.”
Beaudry doesn’t shift. He looks at me in a way that I can only describe as disparaging.
“If you were in the den where you belong, it wouldn’t matter who showed up, would it?” he asks me in the old language, the language we speak in wolf form. I’m just happy there’s too much noise for McCaffrey to hear him. When I only glare at him, he growls. “Sounds like a you problem, Maddox.”
“Thanks for your hospitality, Maddox,” McCaffrey says as the howls die down, with that sneer of his that I also haven’t missed.
He didn’t like that I was unmated five years ago.
He didn’t like that Ty made it clear that I had a voice in his decisions then.
I suspect he’s really not going to like hearing how much of a voice I have in our daily pack operations now, so that’s something to look forward to.
All I do is smile. Then I wait for Beaudry and the other wolves to escort McCaffrey off the property.
Deirdre hangs back, lifting her bowed head enough that she can peer over her shoulder at me.
“Looking forward to talking with you later,” she says, and while I’m sure that’s true, I’m also sure that she’s not being friendly. “Can’t wait to see what you’ve learned in these past five years. Or how you got the idea to live apart from your pack. Alone and unprotected.”
My smile feels a little harder to fake. “I can protect myself, Deirdre, but thanks.”
“Goodness. Why should you have to?” She lets out that tinkling laugh of hers that always makes my shoulders try to touch above my head. “I mean, it couldn’t be me. I’m much too concerned about my young to risk myself like that.”
We both know where she’s going with this. I sigh. She leans in.
“But of course, you don’t have any young, do you, Maddox?
” I only nod, and even roll my eyes, but she’s not done sticking that knife in.
“Ty is a hundred-year king with no queen, no issue, no legacy. If there aren’t already whispers that he’s not favored by the moon, there are sure to be some soon. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
She lets out a laugh at that—not one that suggests she thinks she’s been the least bit silly—then shifts and runs after her shady king.
I wish I could say she didn’t get to me, but I’m still feeling the bruises from that conversation I had with Ty before.
Her little jab sank in deeper than I’d like to admit.
I stay there in the doorway to my cottage, willing my heartbeat to slow down.
And for every other part of me to edge back away from the cliff of pure fury that I’d very much like to throw myself right off.
I know that’s what they want. It would play right into their hands.
I still feel the urge to explode like an actual wound in me.