Chapter 88: The New Beta

I went up the pack house steps and stood on the porch with my arm hanging and the silver burn on my shoulder and the whole pack in front of me.

“Harold,” I said. “Go back down the co-op road and watch that truck. Do not go near it. Do not let anyone go near it. If it moves, you come back and tell me.”

He went.

“June,” I said. “Get the crates out of the tunnel and into the truck. The register and the photographs and the Luna files and the knife and the box. All of it. Take Hannah and Arthur Renn and do not stop for anything.”

She went.

“Mrs. Bell,” I said. “You have the truck at the co-op road and the tank is full. Get it to the mill road and wait there with the engine running.”

She went.

“Elias,” I said. “The circle. Get the two stones out of the round room and put them in the truck. The heart and the piece. Do not let anybody see you carry them.”

He went.

Ada came and stood beside me.

“Beta,” she said. “You are giving orders like a wolf who has been doing it for years.”

“I have been giving orders at the co-op for two years,” I said. “It is the same thing with more rifles.”

Ada almost smiled.

“The truck on the north road,” she said. “Twelve men and two in the cab. That is not a Council culling party. That is a Council company. It is the kind of company they send when they want a pack to disappear.”

“Then they have come to make this pack disappear.”

“They have come to make this pack disappear and they have come before the new moon because they know what the new moon means.” She put her hand on my arm. “Beta. The Alphas can hold a hearing and the Alphas can rule on a claim, but the Alphas cannot fight a Council company. There are seven of us and we are old and four of us are not wolves of the fighting kind.”

“I am not asking the Alphas to fight,” I said. “I am asking the Alphas to be in Boise tomorrow with the register and the crates in front of the whole Council of Alphas. If the Council has sent a company into this territory, the Alphas need to see it.”

Ada looked at me.

“And what will you do?”

“I am going to hold this territory until the Alphas get to Boise,” I said. “And then I am going to stand in that circle in two days and claim it.”

“With a Council company on the north road and twelve men in the trees?”

“With a pack,” I said.

Ada looked at me for a long moment.

“Then I am going to do a thing I have never done in forty years,” she said. “I am going to leave a hearing in the hands of a Beta and take the Alphas to Boise to do the work the Alphas should have been doing since 1891.” She turned and went down the steps to the six Alphas and I heard her talking to them in a low voice.

I went into the pack house and up the stairs to the Alpha’s office and shut the door.

Harlan was in his chair with a blanket over his knees and a cup of tea in his hand that he was not drinking.

“Beta,” he said.

“Alpha.”

“Sit down.”

I sat down.

“The Beta position is a rank under the Alpha,” Harlan said. “You hold it at my pleasure and you answer to me and to the Council. The Council will have a file on you by morning and the file will say that the Beta of the Palouse Ridge pack is the Luna’s blood and the wolf who took the ridge and the wolf who has been hiding a cursed wolf in the trees. There will be a watch on you from now until the day you die.”

“I know,” I said.

“And there is a thing about the Beta position that nobody tells a new Beta.” Harlan put the cup down. “The Beta is the wolf the Council talks to. Not the Alpha. The Council writes to the Beta and the Beta answers and the Alpha signs what the Beta has written. That is how it has been in this territory for eighty-five years and that is how the Council has kept its Betas.” He looked at me. “They are going to write to you. They are going to offer you things. Land and money and a seat in Boise. And when you refuse they are going to threaten you and when you refuse that they are going to come for you.”

“They have already come for me,” I said. “They came for me in the co-op yard and they came for me at the mill and they came for me in the square.”

“They have not come for you as the Beta,” Harlan said. “They have come for a Gamma who was in the way. A Beta is different. A Beta is a wolf the Council has to answer to and the Council does not like to answer.”

I sat in the chair and looked at the window and the snow and the square.

“Harlan,” I said. “If the Alphas rule in Boise and the Council falls and the land comes to the Luna’s line, the pack is going to look to me. Not to the Council and not to the Alphas. To me.”

“Yes,” Harlan said.

“And the pack is not going to want me.”

“Some of them will not.” Harlan put his hand on the desk. “And some of them already do. There were thirty-one wolves in that yard when the co-op burned and there were more than that in the square tonight. The pack is not one wolf. It is a hundred wolves and half of them have been waiting for someone to stand up for eighty-five years.”

I sat there.

“I have been a Gamma for four years,” I said. “I have been a border-warden and a co-op dispatcher and a sister and a daughter. I have never been a Beta and I have never been an Alpha and I do not know if I can do it.”

“Nobody knows if they can do it,” Harlan said. “I did not know and I did it for twenty-two years and I did it badly. You will do it better because you have already done the thing I never did. You asked the question.”

The door opened and June came in with her face white.

“Wren,” she said. “The truck on the north road. It has stopped at the gap and the men are getting out. Harold says there are twelve of them and they have rifles and they are walking up the co-op road.”

I stood up.

“Where is Elias?”

“He is at the mill with the stones. He has not come back.”

“Then I am going to the co-op road,” I said. “And I am going to go as the Beta.”

I went down the stairs and out onto the porch. The pack was in the yard and the yard was full and the wolves had their coats on and their rifles and their shovels and their fence posts.

I stood on the steps.

“Pack,” I said. “The Council has sent a company into this territory. They have come before the new moon because they know what the new moon means. They have come to stop me from standing in the circle and they have come to take this land.”

The yard was silent.

“I am the Beta of this pack,” I said. “And I am not going to fight them in the dark. I am going to walk down that co-op road and I am going to meet them at the gap and I am going to ask them what they want. And if they want a fight, they are going to have to start it in front of the whole pack.”

I stepped down off the porch.

“Who is coming with me?”

The whole yard moved.