"I'm going to tell you something," he says, capping the pen. "Off the record. I've been sheriff in this county for nineteen years, watching that mountain. I have theories I've never put in writing and never will." He picks up the agreement and hands it back. "I don't want the details. I want a quiet county and people who stay on their side of the line." He looks at me. "You staying up there, Dr. Ellis?"
"Yes," I say.
He nods once. "Good." He gets back in the Buick. "Stay quiet."
“He gives good advice,” I say with a laugh.
Alden scoffs and folds the nondisclosure agreement, tucking it into his interior jacket pocket. “We’re lucky to have him as an alley, even if he doesn’t know it.”
The younger wolvesare terrible at terrain tracking, which is both frustrating and genuinely endearing.
I run the first session on the south field with eight wolves between sixteen and twenty, and by the end of two hours I've had to explain contour line reading four times and confiscate one phone that was being used to just pull up Google Maps instead of working the actual topographic overlay.
"This is how you know what the ground is going to do before you step on it," I say, pointing to the elevation lines on the laminated sheet. "Tight lines mean steep. Wide lines mean gradual. These two lines here—" I tap the sheet, "—tell you there's a creek at the base of this slope before you can see it or hear it."
One of the younger wolves squints at the sheet. "Why can't we just smell it?"
"You can smell the creek when you get there, but you can’t smell the changes in terrain to get there. Read the map first."
That evening I find Alden in the war room looking at the tablet I've been using to update the GPS overlay. His eyes are crossed, expression scrunched, like he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.
"How long have you had digital mapping capability?" I ask.
"Since you got here," he says.
"And before that?"
He looks at me.
"Paper," he says.
"Alden." I take the tablet from him. "Your patrol log system runs on a thirty-year-old binder architecture. Your GPS coverage has dead zones in four corridors. Your motion sensor equipment is two product generations behind current field standard." I set the tablet down. "I'm saying this with respect."
"You're saying it with something," he teases, sticking his tongue out at me.
"The pack's technology is very behind," I say.
"We're werewolves," he says. "We have other advantages."
"Which is great until someone brings night vision and you're navigating by smell." I pick up the tablet again. "I'm writing up a recommended equipment list."
He takes the tablet from me, sets it face-down on the table. "You've been awake for nineteen hours."
"I'm fine."
"Brynn has you scheduled for pack law orientation at seven tomorrow."
"I know."
"And the remaining trap sweep is at ten."
"I know that too."
"Cassidy." He says my name with and edge. "Sit down for five minutes." He pulls a chair from the table.
I sit.
Brynn's packlaw orientation starts the following morning and covers everything—ceremonies, traditions, the formal language of council proceedings, the specific protocols for addressing disputes between pack members, the history that lives in the rituals and the meaning behind it.
