People pay for soundtracks like this so they can fall asleep to them,Lydia told her wolf.They call it “green noise.”
Are we going to sleep out here?her wolf said hopefully.
Lydia hated to disappoint it, but ....
Sorry, probably not. But we can stay for a while. I know you need this, and honestly, I do too.
Her wolf seemed content with that.
She’d definitely been cheating it out of time in the great outdoors. With everything that had been going on, it had been easier to grab a book in her spare hours than go for a run. She’d been getting her natural world fix from one of the Jack Casey novels she kept by her bed, where park rangers and lonely wanderers solved mysteries out in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. The books gave her lovingly described wildernessandtidy problems that wrapped themselves up in three hundred pages, which was exactly what the human side of her needed.
But her wolf couldn’t be satisfied with the written word. It had needs, not worries. It needed to immerse itself in its territory. It neededthis... and she did too, just as much as she needed the books.
She roamed through the forest, luxuriating in the ambient green noise that shealsowould have paid money for. The calm here was so deep it felt like it was going to sink all the way down into her bones.
When memories of all her recent trouble started replaying themselves inside her head, they felt more manageable now. Maybe she reallywouldbe able to have some grand revelation out here.
Lydia’s grandparents had spent decades as the undisputed alphas of their pack. They were tough, brusque, no-nonsense people, exactly the kind people described as tough but fair. They weren’t always loved—or even liked—but they were unfailingly respected. And as long as they led the pack, it had thrived. It had come through all its scuffles intact, and it had survived an economic depression and countless inter-pack squabbles.
Then her grandfather had died.
Ruth Willmore was as tough as nails, but she still could have used some time to mourn the loss of her beloved mate, the man she’d been married to for over fifty years. But she had squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and refused to take it. There were other packs in the area who were circling around them, eager to move onto their turf and alert for any sign of weakness. She wasn’t going to give them one.
She’d handled her husband’s death as unblinkingly as anyone possibly could have, even though Lydia knew the two of them had—in their own undemonstrative way—adored each other. She’d held their community together when it would have been easy to let it all fall apart.
But not even Ruth could shrug off all the accumulated wear-and-tear of nearly ninety years. She was getting close to the end now, and everyone knew it. She made sure they did, because she didn’t want the pack she’d protected her whole life to be unprepared for her passing.
There was nothing Ruth could do about Reeve Steele sniffing around the edges of their village, though. He was bad news—a lone wolf who had left his original pack behind in disgust because it had adopted “soft, human” ideas about fairness and understanding. Since then, he’d been on the prowl for territory he could claim as his own.
It was werewolf tradition that outsiders could only issue alpha challenges right when power was being passed down: between an alpha’s death and their funeral. Any other time, it was an illegal seizure of authority. As soon as Reeve had realized Ruth was dying, he had started lurking around the edges of Mountainview, waiting for his chance. The second Lydia’s grandmother was gone, Reeve would make his move.
Reeve was mean, vicious, and determined to stomp out any signs of dissent. If he took over their small Montana town, he would turn it into his own little fascist utopia and drain its scant resources dry. Lydia couldn’t let that happen.
The problem was, they didn’t have any real fighters. An all-out war with another pack would always have finished them, but those were rare these days: lately territory loss involved more money and social pressure than muscle. Most battles were symbolic scuffles that led to injuries, not deaths.
Challenging an alpha was different. That tradition had been around since the Stone Age, and there was no chance of it going away anytime soon. Even though Lydia was terrified of it, it felt as natural to her as gravity.
And it always meant wolf-on-wolf combat.
Technically, it didn’t have to be to the death. If Lydia fought Reeve and lost, she could yield before she left too much blood on the forest floor. She could keep herself alive.
But if she did that, she would be giving him control of the pack. She’d be turning her people over to a nightmare.
Lydia had spent the last few months trying to cram in several years’ worth of fighting experience, but she wasn’t under any illusions about how well it was working. She was a lot stronger and a lot more skilled than she had been, but she was still small for a wolf. She couldn’t stand up to a hulking brute like Reeve. He would tear her to pieces.
As distasteful as it was to think about it, she would have made an alliance with him if he would have agreed. Their pack could give him support and a stable home base, and he could give them ... well, nothing, but he could agree to leave them alone. But Lydia had already sent that offer to him, and he’d rejected it right away.
Then she’d offered to cede a portion of their territory to him. She’d had to grit her teeth to do it, and she’d had to argue her grandmother into signing off on it, but she’d done it.
Reeve had turned that down right away too.
After that, Declan Harris, the pack’s lawyer, had advised her to stop making offers.
Declan worked for Turner Lowe,theshifter law firm, and he had experience with everything from property taxes on griffin nests to getting jaguar sun cults certified as religious non-profits. A lot of different shifters had their own codes of law, and Turner Lowe kept track of them all. Werewolf pack disputes were old hat to Declan, and he’d seen how they usually played out.
“The more you offer, the more desperate he thinks you are.”
“Iamdesperate!” Lydia had felt like tearing her hair out. “If Reeve gets control of this pack, he’ll make everyone’s lives worse.”
