The Border He Kept

y bothy has one room, one cot, one chair, and a stove that draws badly when the wind is from the north. I had learned to sleep th

not sleep

clean and empty, and still my wolf would not lie down. He circled behind my ribs. He pressed his muzzle against the inside of my skin un

said. M

ause there was no one to hear me and because

yes had gone dark. He showed me a picture of the path to the pack house in the dark and

t out

eath. I walked to the border with my coat open and my boots unlaced, and I stopped at the fourth c

cairn should have been. Someone had put a torch there, a long time ago, and burned the heather black in a cir

I had walked around

with rope, a sentence of exile read out to me at the challenge stone in front of the whole pack. The escort had taken t

e question. I had s

ook at a dog that has bitten someone. "Yo

d a cloud coming in off the Atlantic and be inside before it broke. I had a kettle and a chair and a knife I sharpened on the doorstep every Su

t the cairn and l

lived since before the moor was fenced. It burned in the autumn, three weeks before my nineteenth birthday. I was in the yard when it caught. I was there because the old Alpha had sent for me,

y when the fire ca

a long groan, and I remembered my wolf taking over my body without asking, pulling me forward. I remembered the old Alp

anyone. There is a hole in that night, a black place, and I have trie

hrowing light into the sky, and Duncan's hands on my shoulders, and Fergu

t for years. But I had not known it then, and I had stood in the yard with my hands open in front of the whol

something to the healer, Mara, who bent her iron-grey head to his mouth

e calm and sad, saying that the Council had agreed that a wolf with blood on his hands should not be allowed to remain where the Alpha's daugh

d a word, because she was the Alpha's daughter and I was nobody. And on the morning I was exiled,

than I should have, those

a little, walking me out here. The night was very cold and very still, and I could hear

when it

done all night in the bothy, not the pressing against my skin. He wanted to be on four legs with the moor under him and the w

hree, four. My mouth was full of the taste of copper. The moon, that thin crescent, pulled at my spine

wolf and I had been at war since the night of the fire, and the shifting had gotten harder every year, and the last full shift had been at midsummer, and it had taken

go my fingers had gone white, and the dawn had started in the east,

cold tea and put on the only shirt I had without

the path, light and sure, and a scent of rose

her dark hair pinned up and a wool coat buttone

you gloves,

ifted a strand of her hair and I smelled her so cle

ame out like a gate that needed

d you to come to the gathering before the whole pack to answer questions. That was not the Council's idea, and it was not min

fore I told them to. The gloves were good on

Alpha care what happens to a b

was in the yard, and you were standing in front of the whole pack with your hands open, and I saw your fa

bothy popped and settled. My wolf lifted his head and

aid her name, and it came out of me like a st

n her eyes in the grey morning light, and said, very quietly, "Come to the gathering. Stand where I can see