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Jun
A whole bunch of stuff just came by courier.
Winter [JUN]
Courier or COURIER?
Jun
COURIER.
Sealed scroll too, and the COURIER refuses to leave until you sign for it.
Texted Sterling alrdy
So the Elder Council had resurfaced. A crush of anxiety hit me, followed by a tangle of grief, injury, anger. I hated how my emotions seeped up like sewage rising through the ground from a fractured septic tank. Or how sometimes I flinched when Sterling touched me, and how I had made him lock the relic in the vault at his father’s Manhattan apartment, because I didn’t even want the damn thing within a city block of me and I contemplated throwing it into the Sound on the regular.
But as Jun gently told me—the other three SnowFang not knowing what had happened, exactly—it’s okay to not be okay.
Then Jun had tried to feed me a kale shake. So Cye had fed me a lavender-rose-lime cake.
“I’ve got to go,” I told Gazelle.
She scoffed. “Tell them to buzz off. We’re having tea.Tea.”
We’d planned to do a hoity-toity high tea for her social media and the giggles. And I would havemuchpreferred to eat silly cookies and drink from tiny cups than deal with whatever shit had just been shipped over. “Can’t. Emergency.”
“Jesus. You want me to come with? You don’t have to go alone.”
I didn’t hide how my stomach was flip-flopping. An Elder Council messenger was waiting at the flat. And they could be carrying acongrats, you’re fucked, enjoy what life you have leftmissive with them. “No, but thanks. I’ve just got to go deal with whatever this is.”
Hamid pulled open the door to the car. I slid in first with Gazelle squishing in after me. I checked my phone again and tapped out a quick message I was on my way, then pulled at my lip with a manicured nail. Little rhinestones glinted in the corner of my vision while I watched the GranitePaw recede in the distance.
Gazelle poked my leg.“Promise me you’re not ditching me for your husband. Husband emergenciesdon’tcount.”
Her husband, maybe. Mine? “Sterling and I go by the dead and burning rule. It’s not an emergency until there’s a dead body or something’s on fire. As in, there better be flames.”
“That isgrim.”
I looked at my phone again. “This might already have burned to a crisp.”
“Oh hell. Well. Text me. And make sure we’re still on with Jun tomorrow.”
“Heck yes. After whateverthisis, I’ll need a workout.” That and I was pathetically scrawny.
Gazelle had started pestering Jun for routines while I’d been in AmberHowl, and she’d passed along his info, and now Jun was quietly (and nervously) building a fancy client base. Cye was finishing up culinary school, and Burian well…
Burian was still Burian. But he’d gone from lamprey to lost, aimless wolf trying to figure out what he was if he wasn’t a lamprey.
The GranitePaw doorman seemedespeciallysurly as I walked past him.
Sterling had arrived a few moments before me, and stood in our foyer staring at a middle-aged AmberHowl I’d met in passing but not been formally introduced to. There were three other AmberHowl with him, and twenty wooden crates that smelled like the Archives neatly stacked against the wall. Jun, Burian, and Cye watched and blocked the AmberHowl from pushing further into the flat.
The AmberHowl messenger handed me a scroll. It was tied with six ribbons in six different colors, and carried wax seals of all the Elder Alphas and Lunas. There were multiple pieces of paper. I unrolled them.
“SilverPaw has been stripped of their status as Elder pack.” All the remaining Elder packs had voted to strip SilverPaw of its status as Elder, and ban it from re-applying for no less than twenty-five years. “Multiple violations of the Fifth Law by no less than three successive Alphas: Rodero, Jerron, Daniel.”
“Housekeeping,” Sterling said darkly.
