Chapter 22: Elias Tells Half the Truth

June went home. I made her promise to lock the door and not to open it for anyone but me, and she promised, and she went up the co-op road with the moon on her back and her hands in her pockets.

I sat down on the loading dock next to Elias with the coil of silver wire between us.

“Tell me,” I said.

He put the rifle down against the office wall and folded his hands.

“The curse came from the founders,” he said. “I have known that since April. What I did not know until this summer was what it costs to take it off.”

“And what does it cost?”

“A place,” he said. “It is what the old Alpha said when he cursed them. He said the founders would have the land but never the heart of it, and that the wolf who carried the curse would carry it until a wolf of the Luna’s blood stood in the circle and took the founders’ place in the pack.”

I sat with that for a moment.

“Took the founders’ place,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“It means that the curse is tied to the land and to the pack that holds it,” Elias said. “The founders took the land from the old pack by force and the curse was put on the founders and on the land together. It cannot be lifted off me unless someone stands in the circle at the new moon and claims the pack in the old way, in front of the stones, with the pack as witness. And the person who does that has to give up what the founders gave up to hold the land.”

“Which is what?”

“Their place in the pack they came from,” Elias said. “The founders were not from here. They came from a pack in the east and they cut themselves off from it to take this territory. They gave up their old pack and their old name and their old Alpha, and the curse holds them to that bargain. Whoever takes their place has to do the same thing. They have to stand in the circle and renounce the pack they were born into and claim this land as their own, and the curse will move from me to them, and then it will break.”

The yard was quiet. The elevator hummed the way it always hums at night.

“And that person is me,” I said.

“That person is the wolf of the Luna’s blood,” Elias said. “Clara Renn says the Luna lived and had a daughter, and the daughter had a daughter, and Maeve says the line came down through her mother and through your mother and into you and June. You are the wolf of the Luna’s blood. It is you.”

“And if I do it,” I said, “I lose my place in the Palouse Ridge pack.”

“You lose your place in the Palouse Ridge pack,” he said. “You renounce it in front of the stones. You are no longer a Gamma of this pack and no longer a wolf of Harlan’s line. You are the Alpha of the old pack, the one that was here before the founders, and the territory is yours, and the curse is on you instead of me.”

“And then what?”

“And then it breaks,” Elias said. “That is what the founders’ page says. Two bloodlines, one claim, no cure. The claim is the cure. The Luna comes home and takes the land and the curse lets go.” He looked at me. “But it lets go of me by taking hold of you. For a moment. Long enough for the moon to see it.”

I put my hands on my knees.

“How long is a moment?”

“I do not know.”

“What does it feel like?”

“I do not know that either.”

“You are not being very helpful.”

“I know,” Elias said. “I have been carrying this since July and I have not been able to make it any smaller.”

I got up and walked to the edge of the loading dock and looked out at the dark yard.

“And if I do not do it,” I said. “If I do not stand in the circle at the new moon. What happens to you?”

“The stone is the anchor,” he said. “If the stone stays here and the moon comes and no one claims it, the curse stays where it is. I go on changing on the new moon and waking up in fields and carrying the marks of the last wolf it took. You go on being a Gamma of the Palouse Ridge pack and you marry Dale in October because the Council has signed the claim and there is nothing you can do about it.”

I turned around.

“That is not a choice,” I said.

“No,” Elias said. “It is not.”

I sat back down on the loading dock. The silver wire was between us and the moon was up over the elevator and the whole county was quiet.

“There is one more thing,” Elias said.

“Of course there is.”

“The claim. The trial mate-claim that Dale filed. Under Council law, a claim can be set aside if the wolf being claimed is already mated.” He looked at me. “I marked you on the loading dock. It is not a full mark, not the way a mark is done at a claiming, but it is a mark, and it is on your neck, and a Council investigator can see it and a Council of Alphas can rule on it. If we go to Boise and I stand in front of the Alphas and say that you are my mate and I show them the mark and you swear to it, the claim is void. Dale cannot marry you because you are already mine.”

“And if we do that,” I said, “then the whole Council knows you exist, and they know what you are, and they will want to know why a cursed wolf is walking around in the territory with a Gamma on his arm.”

“Yes.”

“And Dale will know.”

“Dale will know.”

“And the hunters will know.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the coil of silver wire on the boards.

“Then we have to do it before the new moon,” I said. “Because after the new moon, if I have not stood in the circle, the curse stays with you and the Council owns the claim and Dale owns me. And if I do stand in the circle, I lose my pack and I become an Alpha of a pack that does not exist anymore except in a box of stones in an old woman’s house.”

Elias reached out and took my hand and the heat came up through my fingers and into my arm.

“You do not have to do it,” he said. “That is the thing I have been trying to say to you all night and I have been saying it badly. You do not have to stand in that circle. You can let me go. I have been on my own for four months and I can go on being on my own. You have a sister and a pack and a place in this territory that you have earned, and I am not going to ask you to give it up for a cursed wolf you met in a field.”

I looked at him. His amber eyes were steady and his hand was warm and his face in the moonlight was tired and careful and very still.

“Do not do that,” I said.

“Do not do what?”

“Do not be noble at me.” I pulled my hand out of his. “I have had enough noble men in my life. My father was noble. He died in a threshing accident because he was too noble to ask for help with the belt. Owen was noble. He went out to the north fence alone at seven o’clock because he did not want to wake anyone, and he died in a field with a man standing over him.” I stood up. “If you are going to be noble at me, I am going to walk home, and you can sit on this dock with your rifle and your curse and your good intentions and think about what you have done.”

He stood up too.

“That is not what I meant,” he said.

“I know what you meant.” I turned around. “And it is not your decision. It is mine. It was mine the night I put my hand on your shoulder in the co-op office and it was mine the night I took your hand in the field, and it is mine now. I am not going to stand in a circle at the new moon because you asked me to. I am going to stand in it because it is my land and my family and my brother, and because the Council has been lying to this pack for eighty-five years, and because if I do not stand in it, Dale wins.” I picked up the coil of silver wire. “Now. We are going to take this wire to Silas and we are going to show him where Dale put it, and then we are going to go up to Maeve’s and look at the letters, and we are going to find a way to make the Council of Alphas listen to a Gamma and a cursed wolf and an old woman with a box of stones.”

Elias looked at me for a long moment. Then he picked up the rifle and put it against his shoulder.

“All right,” he said.

“All right?”

“All right,” he said. “I am not going to be noble at you.”

“Good.”

“I am going to be terrified at you instead.”

I almost laughed. I did not, because it was not funny, but something in my chest loosened.

We were halfway across the yard when the trailer light came on up the road and Silas’s car came down the co-op road and stopped in the yard, and Silas got out and stood in the headlights with a piece of paper in his hand.

“Warden,” he said. “The Council has moved the hearing.”

“What hearing?”

“The hearing on the trial claim,” Silas said. “It has been moved from October to the twenty-ninth of September. That is the day after the new moon. Dale requested it and the Council approved it this afternoon.” He held out the paper. “He is not going to wait for the new moon to catch your wolf. He is going to catch him on the new moon and he is going to have you married to him the next day.”