Chapter 52: June in Danger

“A map with red pencil,” I said. “June, are you sure?”

“I know what a map looks like.” She was still holding my arm. “It had the mill and the east field and the stone wall and there were marks on it, and there was a line drawn from the mill to the trees, and Rourke was writing in a book beside it.” She let go of my arm. “I did not wait to see more. I went out the back way and through the gap in the wall and I came up the ridge.”

“Did he see you?”

“I do not think so. I did not make a sound.”

“You made a sound going out the back. The door on the mill office has a hinge that squeals when it is cold.”

June was quiet.

“I did not hear it,” she said.

“You would not. You were frightened and you were listening for him and not for the door.” I stood up and went to the window. The yard was dark and the lights were off in the barn and there was one lantern on the porch. “You have to go back to the clearing. You have to tell Elias and Arthur and Hannah that Rourke is not here to cull a wolf. He is here to find the stone, and if he finds the clearing he will find the stones and the record and the three of us in the same place, and he will not need a cull order for any of it.”

“I will go now,” June said.

“No.” I turned around. “You will go at first light. It is too dark to go through the trees tonight and Rourke has men on the north line. You will go home and you will sleep and you will go up the ridge before the sun is up, and you will take the long way round and not the mill road.”

“Wren, I can go now.”

“June.” I took her by both shoulders. “I have been in this room for six hours and I have been thinking about every way this can go wrong, and I am not going to send my sister through the trees in the dark with a culling officer in the mill. You will go at first light. That is the end of it.”

She looked at me for a moment and then she nodded.

“Fine,” she said.

“Say it properly.”

“I will go at first light.”

She went out and the guard shut the door and turned the key.

I sat down on the bed and did not sleep. I lay there with my eyes open and the window bars making a pattern on the ceiling and the mark on my shoulder warm and steady, and I listened to the pack house. I listened to the boots in the hall and the men in the yard and the truck that came and went twice before midnight. I listened to Harlan's voice in his office below me and to Rourke's voice in the yard and to a door opening and closing somewhere at the back of the house.

Around two o'clock the yard went quiet.

Around three o'clock I heard a wolf howl.

It was a long way off and it was in the trees on the north line, and I sat up in the bed and put my hand on the window bars and listened. It came again, and it was not a pack wolf. Pack wolves did not howl alone in the north trees at three in the morning. It was a rogue or it was a wolf that had no business being there.

And then I heard a second howl, and a third, and they were not far off and they were moving.

I went to the door and put my ear against it.

“Guard,” I said. “Guard. There are wolves on the north line.”

The guard in the hall did not answer.

“Guard,” I said again. “I am a Gamma of this pack and there are wolves on the north line and I need you to open this door.”

The key turned and the door opened and the guard was not a man from the Council. It was one of the Corrigan boys, and he was white to the lips.

“Wren,” he said. “Rourke has taken the patrol out. He took six men and he has gone north and he has got June with him.”

I stopped.

“What?”

“She went out at three o'clock. I saw her from the porch. She went down the co-op road toward the north line and Rourke's men picked her up.” He swallowed. “They did not arrest her. They put her in the truck and they went north and Rourke said they had found a wolf in the trees and the girl knew where it was.”

I was down the stairs and out the door before he finished.

The yard was empty. The hunters' truck was gone and the men were gone and there was a lantern on the porch and a rifle leaning against the rail that somebody had left behind. I took the rifle. It was loaded and the bolt was clean and it was not mine but it would do.

I ran down the co-op road with the rifle in my hands and the snow up to my ankles and the mark on my shoulder burning.

The north line was a mile. I ran it in the dark with my breath coming hard and my wolf up and pressing at my skin and the cold in my throat. I came to the gap in the fence where the wire had been cut and I stopped and listened.

There were wolves in the trees. I could hear them and I could smell them, and under the smell of wolves there was a smell that was not a wolf.

Silver.

And then I heard June scream.

It came from the trees to the east of the gap, and it was short and it was cut off, and I went into the trees with the rifle up and my heart in my throat.

There was a clearing in the trees about forty yards in. It was not the circle. It was a small open place where the trees had come down in a windstorm and the ground was covered in dead branches, and in the middle of it there were two wolves.

One of them was Rourke. He was a big wolf, gray and heavy through the shoulders, and he was standing over June with his head down and his teeth showing. June was on the ground with her hands over her head and there was blood on her sleeve.

The other wolf was Elias.

He came out of the trees on the far side of the clearing with his belly low and his fur up and his amber eyes fixed on Rourke, and the sound that came out of him made the branches move.

“Elias,” I said. “No.”

He did not hear me. He came across the clearing and hit Rourke in the shoulder and the two of them went down in the dead branches and the snow, and June rolled away and got to her feet and ran to me.

“I am all right,” she said. “I am all right, he only caught my arm.”

“Get behind me.”

I put the rifle up. The two wolves were rolling in the branches and the snow and it was too dark to shoot and there was no way to tell one from the other, and then Rourke got his teeth into Elias's shoulder and Elias made a sound that was not a growl and went down.

I fired into the air.

The sound of it went through the trees and both wolves stopped. Rourke lifted his head and looked at me with the blood on his muzzle and his ears went back.

“Get off him,” I said. “Get off him now or the next one goes into your shoulder.”

Rourke let go of Elias and stepped back and stood over him with his head low. His eyes were yellow and his muzzle was red and there was a look in them that was not a wolf's look.

And then the trees behind him moved and six men came out of the dark with rifles and lanterns and Dale at the front of them.

“Wren,” Dale said. “Put the rifle down.”

“He has my sister,” I said. “He put his teeth in her arm.”

“I know. I saw.” Dale came forward with his hands up. “Put the rifle down and I will handle it. I will handle it, Wren, I give you my word.”

I looked at him and then at Rourke and then at Elias on the ground with the blood on his shoulder and the snow under him.

“Your word,” I said. “You gave your word to the Council this morning.”

Dale stopped.

“Yes,” he said. “I did.” He turned and looked at Rourke. “And I am taking it back.”

He turned and put his shoulder into Rourke and took the gray wolf down into the branches and the two of them went rolling into the dark.