sleep th

of water and did not open either of them. The cabin was one room and a loft and a woodstove and a porch that needed fixing. It had been a rental and th

to bed and lay in the dark with my eyes open,

first snow. My sister had just been made Luna, and the pack had held a gathering in the big house with the porch, and there had been a fir

nd watching my sister move through the crowd in her grey dress with the silver

and stood

k bedroom of the pack house, and Dane had been running the pack in all but name since the spring. He had sandy hair that fell

ebody who is about

ays about

n watching you all night. You have been l

door. I had been looking at

ering," I said. "M

ing her duty. Ther

ot say that a

s eyes were amber and there was a fire behind me and th

le time I should have said no. But it was October and the aspen gold was in his hair an

ap table with a match from a box in his pocket and set the candle down, and the room became very small and very warm. He did not sa

the Alpha in the

kno

own who I want it to be since I was twenty. I have been waiting for her to loo

an

. I will be the Alpha in the spring and I will do my duty and I will never say a word about this to anyone. But I have wanted to say it for six

acket and something underneath that was only him, and the wolf inside

ssed

t me out of my coat and my sweater. It was October and the lookout had no heat and neither of us felt the cold. He put me down on the cot by the

ling him against my back and the whole length of him against me, warm and solid, and I remember the exact moment he pushed into me and how I pressed my face into the pillow and he told me to say his name, and I said it, and

his eyes and I lay beside him with my head on

the pack in the

ather i

g me for a year that I need to choose." He

all

are c

back of my hand. "I am happy. That is the

on my hair and

stub. My sweater was under the map table. I pulled it on and stood at the window and looked down at the va

en said the rest and he was wrong about some of

ape across the door. The door was open. There was smoke coming out of the back of the building and the window of the back room had blo

the back room through the open doorway and I saw the black on the floor and I

come back for fifteen years. That is the truth of it, and I have told myself a hundred reasons since, and none of them are good enough. I was twenty six y

ed. Owen had said it as though he had known it f

ks were on the kitchen table. I got up and lit the stove and put the kettle

ke a small x. The first page was dated three years before her death and the first

and a man in a grey coat who came in after her and asked about the child. I read about a Council that had been keeping count

Nine. Nine. Nine. The little x's of her

. He says I am a fool and that the Council will kill me. I told him I am the Luna and it i

shaking and the kettle on the stove h

e seat beside me and the pendant around my neck under my shirt, and the whole valley was gold in th

in his hand and his hair still wet from washing. He sa

you have not

telling

dio in his po

as in my sister's clinic two days before she died and there is a word written nine times in the margins of a notebook." I took the pendant out from under my shirt and held it in my hand. "We are going to sit dow

nt in my hand and then a

inside," he said.

two hours we were just a county officer and an Alpha with a pencil, and it was the closest thing to peace I had felt in fifteen years. He

ite and said that there was a car coming up the ridge road with a Denver plate and