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GranitePaw.
Demetrius tossed the phone to Henri and pulled out his own.
Searle took the collar off the ground, stepped behind the wolf, and shoved the collar between the wolf’s teeth. The wolf howled. Searle knelt behind him and cranked the collar shut, gagging the wolf with it.
“Behave,” Searle told the wolf softly, “or I’ll tell her she can gnaw on your leg some more.”
“She did this?” Henri asked Searle.
“She did.”
Henri gave me a look of polite shock.
I clicked my teeth at him.
Demetrius held his phone in his palm.
“This is unexpected,” a voice I’d know anywhere said on the other end. Alpha Kyle of GranitePaw.
“Playing stupid really isn’t one of your skills,” Demetrius said.
Henri placed his foot on the wolf’s exposed bone and leaned down. The wolf screamed.
“I have something of yours,” Demetrius said.
Silence from Kyle.
“Thisisyours, isn’t it?”
Henri tapped the bone. The wolf howled and begged Kyle to save him, gibberingplease stop, please stop, Alpha save me.
“Stay out of my territory, Kyle. I’m not giving you Sterling, and I’m not letting you kill him. Your idiot scouts weren’t even close to where Sterling is. They were on my lawn. And he just pissed himself.On my lawn.”
“And I don’t believe for one instantsheis dead. You’re enmeshed with these Mortcombes, Demetrius, and I will expose you to the Council.”
Demetrius growled, “My pelt won’t buy your elevation. Look elsewhere.”
Laughter from Kyle. Demetrius ended the call and looked at the GranitePaw spy with disgust.
Marcella paced up to her mate’s shoulder and took Demetrius’ phone before he crushed it in his hand. “The GranitePaw sounded bolder than usual. Brazen.”
Brazen my furry tail. “Antagonistic.”
Searle’s expression saidshut up. To be fair, so did Marcella’s. Too bad. I had some important information to share, because the GranitePaw had been building their dumpster-fire empire right under the Elders’ noses and now was setting that trash-barge down river. “This is what the GranitePawdo. This is what the Elder Council doesn’t see. They focus on being strategic and increasing their pack’s wealth, resources, and, most important,control. Every wolf in New York—including the wanderers—knows not to draw the GranitePaw’s attention, and you play by GranitePaw rules. Kyle knew this scout would get caught. And look where he ended up: the front lawn. Kyle made his point. He can get to you. He can make you respond.”
Kyle wasn’t playing by the usual rulebook. He was playing by thecity wolfrulebook, and he was playing with the rulebook of a wolf willing to round up his very large, custom-built pack and let the rest of Gaia’s creation burn itself into the ground while he rode it out in a human-crowded neutral fortress.
Marcella looked at Demetrius. “He recognized her. Make it clean. Summer. Searle.House. Now.”
Now… Kiss
So Equinox with the AmberHowl was basically a muddy BBQ. A very large, very noisy, very chaotic muddy BBQ that would have put a SilverPaw gathering to shame. The catering was out front on the asphalt driveway. Cars lined the road and parked in the hayfield at the base of the hill. Pups ran all over.Adultsran all over. It was a mass of wolves visible from space.
And I would have been fine with it, if I hadn’t been theGaia-damned center of attention. Because the entire pack wanted to congratulate Searle on his long-awaited nuptials.
SilverPaw had been a large pack, but even Solstice had rarely been more than a hundred or so wolves willing to make the trek from their little corner of nowhere to our little corner of nowhere, and generally it had been more formal. Or I now appreciated it had been much more formal. Someone even had brought a mobile deep fryer and was frying dough, butter, and snack cakes out on the front drive.
Wonder what Cye would have made of the fried butter.
