Chapter 27: The Wolf in the Field

I ran.

The wheat was chest high in the east field and it whipped at my arms and my face, and the ground under it was dry and rutted and I stumbled twice and got up both times and kept going. Ahead of me the pale fur was a shape in the dark that I could follow, and the rope between us pulled tight and pulled harder every time the wolf pulled away.

He was not running for the pack house.

He went east along the wall and then he turned north, into the trees at the corner of the field, and I stopped at the edge of the trees and listened. There was nothing. The wheat behind me was loud with my own passing and then it was quiet, and the trees in front of me were black and still.

"Elias," I said.

A branch moved. Then the wolf came out of the dark and stood in front of me with its head low and its tail down and its amber eyes on my face, and it made a sound that was not a growl.

"You are not going to the stones," I said.

The wolf turned its head and looked north, into the trees, and then it looked at me again and took a step and stopped and looked back.

It wanted me to follow.

I followed it.

The trees on the north end of the territory are old and thick and nobody has cut them since the founders. There is a deer trail through them that the border-wardens use, and the wolf did not take it. It went through the underbrush with its nose down and its tail out, and I went after it with my hands in front of my face and my boots catching on roots, and the further we went the colder it got and the stronger the smell of pine.

And then the rope between us changed.

It was not a pull anymore. It was a direction, like a compass needle, and it was pointing at something ahead of us, and my wolf stood up in my chest and turned her head the same way the wolf in front of me had turned his head.

I stopped.

There was a clearing ahead of me. It was small and round and the trees around it were older than the trees around them, and the ground in it was flat and covered with moss, and in the middle of it there was a stone.

It was not a boundary marker. It was a stone the size of a man, gray and rough and standing upright in the moss, and there was a mark cut into it. The mark was a circle with a line through it and another line crossing it.

The wolf went into the clearing and stood beside the stone and looked at me.

I walked into the clearing and put my hand on the stone.

The heat came up through my palm and into my arm and into my chest, and it was not the heat of the mate bond. It was older than that. It went down into my bones and up into my head and it filled me up like water fills a cup, and I heard something.

It was not a voice. It was a sound, low and long, like a hundred wolves howling somewhere very far away, and it came up through the stone and into my hand and into my body, and my wolf threw her head back and howled back.

I took my hand off the stone and the sound stopped.

The wolf was watching me. Its ears were up and its tail was out and it was very still.

"This is the circle," I said. "This is the old circle. The one the founders buried. The one in the east field is a copy."

The wolf made a sound.

I looked around the clearing. The trees were thick and the moss was deep and there was no path in and no path out except the one we had come by, and the stone stood in the middle of it with the Luna's mark cut into it and the old sound still ringing in my fingers.

And then, at the edge of the clearing, something moved.

I turned. There was a shape at the tree line, low and dark, and then another shape beside it, and then a third. They were wolves. They were not pack wolves. They were thin and their fur was rough and their eyes in the dark were yellow, and they came into the clearing slow with their heads low and their teeth showing.

Rogues. Three of them, and then a fourth at the far edge of the trees.

Elias turned and put himself between me and the wolves, and the sound that came out of him was not a sound I had heard from him before. It was low and it came from his chest and it rolled out across the clearing, and the four rogues stopped where they were and did not come closer.

But they did not go away.

"Elias," I said quietly. "There are four of them."

He did not turn his head. He stood in front of me with his shoulders up and his tail straight out, and the rogues spread out along the tree line and began to circle.

I put my hand in my jacket and found the little bag of stones and closed my fingers around it. It was warm. It was very warm. It was warmer than it had ever been, and it was getting warmer the longer I held it.

And the wolves stopped circling.

They stopped and turned their heads and looked at me, all four of them, and their ears went back and their tails went down, and the biggest one made a sound that was almost a whine.

I did not know what I was doing. I only knew that the stones were hot in my hand and the mark on the standing stone was in front of me and the old sound was still in my bones, and I took a step forward and said the seven words that Ruth had written down in 1932.

I do not know what they meant. I do not know if I said them right. I said them the way they were written and I said them loud, and the sound of them went out across the clearing and into the trees.

The four rogues turned and ran.

They ran so fast that the underbrush crashed and the branches moved and then there was nothing but the sound of them going, and the clearing was quiet again.

I stood there with my hand in my jacket and my heart going hard.

Elias turned around. His ears were up and his eyes were wide and he came to me and put his nose against my chest and pushed, and the rope between us went slack and then tight and then slack again.

"I do not know what I did," I said. "Elias, I do not know what I did."

He made a sound in his throat and pressed his head against me, and I put my arms around his neck and held on.

We stayed in the clearing until the sky began to go gray. The wolf lay down beside the standing stone with his head on his paws and I sat with my back against the stone and my hand on his fur, and the stones in my pocket cooled slowly and then went warm again with the wolf's body heat and mine.

When the sky was gray enough to see the trees, the wolf got up and stood over me and looked down at me with his amber eyes, and then he turned and walked into the trees and I heard the change begin.

It took a long time. Longer than it had in the field. I did not watch. I sat with my back against the stone and looked at the moss and listened to him breathe, and when it was quiet I looked up and he was kneeling in the leaves with Owen's coat around his shoulders and his hair in his eyes.

"Wren," he said. His voice was rough.

"I am here."

"I remember it." He looked up at me. "I remember the whole night. The change, and the trees, and the clearing, and the rogues. I have never remembered a night before." He got to his feet and came to me and put his hand on the stone. "It is the circle. It is the real circle. It has been here the whole time, under the trees, and nobody in this pack has found it in eighty-five years."

"And the rogues ran," I said. "I said the words and they ran."

"You said the words of the old pack," Elias said. "In the old circle. With the stones in your hand." He looked at me. "Wren. You are the Luna. You are not a Gamma of the Palouse Ridge pack who might be the Luna. You are the Luna, and you have been since the day you were born, and the old pack knows it even if the Council does not."

I sat down on the moss.

"Then what do we do?" I said.

"We go home," Elias said. "And we get some sleep. And then we go to Boise."

I looked up at him.

"Boise," I said. "The claim hearing is in a month."

"The claim hearing is in a month," Elias said, "and the Council of Alphas meets on the tenth of October, and I am not going to wait for them to come to us. We have the circle and the stones and the words and the Luna. We are going to Boise and we are going to walk into that Council chamber and we are going to make a claim of blood in front of every Alpha in the territory, and they are going to have to listen."

I got up. My legs were stiff and my hands were cold and the sun was coming up over the trees.

"All right," I said. "Boise."

We walked out of the trees together and down through the east field to the road, and when we came over the stone wall there was a truck parked on the mill road with the engine running and June in the driver's seat.

She got out and ran to me.

"Wren," she said. "Wren, I found him. I found Arthur Renn. He is in Boise and he has the record and he has been waiting for someone to come and ask for it for thirty years, and he knows where the Luna's family is." She stopped and got her breath. "He knows where the Luna's family is, Wren. He has known for thirty years. And it is not in Boise."

"Where is it?" I said.

June looked at me.

"It is here," she said. "It has always been here."