Chapter 17: June Sees Us

I stood on the loading dock with the coat over my knees and my hair down my back and tried to look like a woman who had been working all night.

“The stone is in the mill,” Silas said again. “Harlan called me an hour ago. Someone broke into the mill last night and left something in the loft, and it is not the stone. It is a note. It says the stone is gone and it will be brought to the Council of Alphas in October, and it is signed with a mark.” He came up the ramp. “The mark is a circle with a line through it and another line crossing it. It is the same mark that was on the flat stone under the wall.”

“Who left it?”

“Nobody saw. The mill has been empty since you took the wolf out of it, and the door does not lock.” He stopped at the top of the ramp and looked at me. “You took the wolf out of it.”

“I did.”

“Where is he?”

“He is not in the mill.”

“I did not ask where he is not.” Silas looked at the coat over my knees. It was Owen’s coat, and it was too big for me, and it was draped over me in a way that a coat is draped over a woman who has been sleeping on a loading dock.

“Warden,” he said slowly. “What is on your neck?”

I put my hand up. There was a mark under my jaw, low down, and I had not seen it and I had not thought about it, and I could feel the heat of it under my fingers.

“Nothing,” I said.

“That is not nothing.” Silas looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked around the yard, at the back of the grain elevator and the office door and the empty road, and something in his face changed. “He is here.”

“Silas.”

“Do not lie to me, warden. I have been lied to by better liars than you for eleven days and I am tired of it.” He stepped closer. “The man in the mill is on this co-op ground, and you have been with him, and the pack is going to hear about it if I do not hear the truth from you first. So tell me the truth. Is he dangerous?”

“No.”

“Is he the rogue?”

“No.”

“Then who is he?”

I looked at him. He was not in his suit and his hair was not combed and there was a mark on his jaw and he had come up the co-op road at six in the morning to tell me about a note in a mill. He was Council. He was also the only person in the county who had asked me a question in eleven days without already knowing the answer.

“His name is Elias,” I said. “He is a wolf. He is cursed to change on the new moon. He was in the field the night my brother died and he was the one who tried to save him. He has been living in the mill since April because the stone would not let him leave, and he is my mate, and if you tell the Council that he is here, they will take him to Boise and I will never see him again.”

Silas did not say anything for a while. The rooster had given up and the co-op yard was quiet.

“Your mate,” he said.

“Yes.”

“That is the bond.” He looked at the mark on my neck. “I have read about it. I have never seen it. The Council does not talk about mate bonds in its reports.”

“The Council does not talk about a lot of things.”

“No,” Silas said. “It does not.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a folded paper and held it out to me. “This came to me from Boise last night. I have been carrying it around since two in the morning trying to decide what to do with it.”

I took the paper. It was a letter on Council letterhead, dated the twenty-fifth of August, and it was addressed to the Council investigator, Palouse Ridge territory, and it said that the Council had received a report from the Beta of the Palouse Ridge pack concerning a rogue on the north line, and that the Council was authorizing a cull and a trial mate-claim at the next full moon.

“A trial mate-claim,” I said.

“Read the rest.”

I read the rest. It said that in the absence of a confirmed Luna in the Palouse Ridge pack, and pending the resolution of the rogue matter, the Council had approved the Beta’s request to claim a mate under the trial provision, and that the candidate named in the request was one Wren Halloran, Gamma border-warden, and that the claim would be registered at the full moon in October.

I read it three times. My hands were cold.

“Dale has filed for me,” I said.

“Dale has filed for you,” Silas said. “Under Council law, a Beta may claim a mate under the trial provision if the Alpha’s line has no confirmed Luna and the Beta is acting in the Alpha’s stead. The claim is good for one year and it can be dissolved by the Council after that, if the Council chooses.” He put his hands in his pockets. “It is a very old provision. It has not been used in this territory since 1902. It was written into the code for exactly one reason, and the reason is to take a woman and her land together.”

The bag of stones was in my pocket and the coat was over my knees and the loading dock was cold under my boots. I heard myself breathing.

“He is doing this because of the east field,” I said. “He cannot take the land unless he has a claim to the family that owns it. My mother’s land came to me and June. If he claims me, the land comes with me.”

“It is a land grab with a wedding ring on it,” Silas said. “And it is legal, and it will be registered at the full moon, and there is not a wolf in this territory who can stop it except the Alpha.” He looked at me. “Harlan can refuse to recognize the claim. He can call it what it is and send it back to Boise. But Harlan is afraid of the Council, and the Council knows it, and Dale knows it.”

“Then I will go to Harlan myself.”

“You will not get to him. Dale has been at his ear for a week and Harlan has already told him the claim will be heard.” Silas looked out at the road. “There is one more thing in the letter. It says the Council has approved the cull, and it names the hunters, and it says the rogue must be taken before the full moon. That is three weeks from now. Dale has three weeks to kill your mate and marry you to himself, and he has the Council’s signature on both.”

I looked down at the coat on my knees. It was Owen’s coat and it was too big for me and it still smelled faintly of the mill.

“Why are you telling me this?” I said. “You are Council. This is Council business. You should be helping Dale.”

Silas was quiet for a moment.

“I am Council,” he said. “And I have been Council for nineteen years, and in nineteen years I have watched the Council take land from eleven packs and Lunas from four, and I have signed the papers every time, and I have told myself that I was only an investigator and the decision was not mine.” He looked at me. “Two weeks ago I came to this territory to buy grain land and I found a pack with a forged map, a Beta with a coat in his barn and a woman who was standing in a field with her hand on a wolf’s head and telling the truth. I am not going to sign the papers this time.”

I stood up.

“Then help me,” I said.

“I am trying to.” He took the letter back and folded it and put it in his pocket. “The note in the mill was left for the Council of Alphas, not for me, and it was left by someone who knows the stone is gone and wants the Alphas to know it before October. That means there is someone in this territory who is not Dale and not the Council and who has the stone. Find that person before the full moon and you have a chance. Find them before the new moon and you have more than a chance.”

He turned and walked down the ramp.

“Silas,” I called.

He stopped.

“The mark on your jaw,” I said. “Where did you get it?”

He touched his jaw and his face went still.

“I was in the mill last night,” he said. “I went there after I left your co-op. Someone was already in the loft and they did not want to be found, and they hit me with something heavy and they went out the back before I could see their face. I have been sitting in my car on the mill road for four hours with a headache and a note and no idea what to do next.” He looked at me. “Whoever took the stone was in that mill last night, warden. And they left the note for me to find.”

He got in his car and drove off.

I stood on the loading dock. Then I went around the back of the elevator and Elias was standing there with his back against the wall and his hands at his sides.

“I heard,” he said.

“Dale has filed for me.”

“I heard that too.”

“And there is a person in this territory who has the stone and who hit a Council investigator over the head and left a note.” I looked at him. “I do not know who it is. I do not know where the stone is. I do not know how to stop a claim that the Council has already signed. And I have a mate who is going to change in eleven days and run to a stone I cannot find.”

He reached out and took my hand.

“We will start with the letters,” he said. “Maeve’s letters. There is a name in them somewhere.”

I nodded. Then I heard a sound at the top of the co-op road, and I turned.

June was standing at the edge of the yard with her lunch pail in her hand and her red hair tied back and her mouth open.

She looked at me. She looked at Elias. She looked at my hair down my back and the coat over my shoulders and the mark on my neck that I had not covered up.

“Wren,” she said. “What is he doing here?”