The Border He Kept

ing frost and the smell of wet heather, and beneat

and the knuckles had split again. Fifteen years of this work and my hands had never learned to like the col

e wind

e stops. My chest pulled in air and held it, and there it was again

eneath all of it, a low, steady hum that ran down the back of my

ead for the first ti

the dark, a pressure behind my eyes when the moon got fat. Now he stood up inside me, ears forward,

i

the ridge line above me. Nothing but heather, the black shapes of pines, the last of the night sitting

and I understood it was moving. Coming down t

ard

kept with any consistency: what comes down the path is not yours, do not go to meet it. I

wet at the ends from the fog, pushed back off her face with the flat of her hand. The second thing was her stride. Lo

thing. They found me from fort

with damp, his beard catching the mist, walking like a man carrying a stone he did not want to put down. And at her shoulder, s

er twice at a distance, at the gathering three years past and at her father's burial, where I ha

. Not like this. Not with m

to shake. I put t

ed, when they were twenty y

me out lower than I meant it to. "It

othing in it. "This is the Alpha. She wante

feel nothing about a pack that had not wanted me in fifteen years. Isla MacRae. Twenty-six years old, late to her first shift, a wolf that had come

e off her collar and wrapped around my throat. Her eyes were not the flat grey of river stone. They h

Callum,"

es

s border since before I was Alp

ll you c

question. She turned and started walking east alo

, the Council will expect us at the gatherin

ears, Uncle. It can wait another

was where I had been standing. But my wolf was pulling at the inside of my skin lik

where the fourth cairn sits on the shoulder of the hill, looked back at the line of white stones running awa

teen," I said.

ssi

er does the rest. I rebuild what I can." I nodded at the hollow where the cairn shoul

in. "Before you ca

es

ne knows wh

miliar gesture, uncle to niece. "Darling, there are a hundred reasons a pile

cairns," she said. "He to

he kind of face that had been practiced at not moving,

he gathering will be long. Perhaps we s

I am not a child, Uncle, whatever

ist. Fergus took his hand off her back and folded both of them behind him, and the smile he gave h

"I only meant to keep

under her eyes was grey from lack of sleep. The collar of her coat had a small tear

the rest,

e for every year she had ruled, and that when she died her daughter set them along the border and no one had moved them since. She asked how I kept them standing in the winter. She asked what I ate. She asked whether

gly that I had to stop talking and pretend to s

oing quiet,

a talkat

n either. He never looked like he

ot wait, and this time she nodded. She turned to go back down the path, then s

ough me like light

and under my own skin my wolf threw his head back and howled so loudly that I flinched. I fel

le

e slightly unsteady and she covered it with a small fr

m in the bu

d. "You have been here fi

consid

ked away down the path with Fergus at her shoulder and Duncan behind her, and

cold anymore. Th

not light it. The sun came up and found me there, and my wolf paced behind my ribs and pressed against my sk

pack and a rank and a place to bring his mate home to. It should not happen to an exile with a leaking roof and no

ttle on. I took it off again because m

my knife out before the knock came, because border guards do not ge

d him, down the path, a grey wolf sat on its haunches wat

id. "She has also asked that you walk the north line with

can walk her own border. She doe

swer them for us in person. Tomorrow, at the gathering. Before the whole pack." He paused. "You should know, the Council has also raised questions about the Alpha's wolf. H

t him. He

do not com

a wolf no one can vouch for, and that no one knows what he does out here at night." He turned away. "Midmorning. The gathering. Wear

h. I stood in the door with my knife still in my hand and t

o the gathering with a threat in his mouth, and he had

in front of the whole pack tomorrow