But it takes me much, much longer to settle.
14.
When I finally get to the den, the vibes are excessively off. It’s a whole loud, temper-fueled uproar in place of the usual celebratory situation.
It’s certainly not the way a solstice is supposed to feel.
Different packs are shouting at each other in the great cavern, and it’s not just the males I hear going at it this morning. The women have gotten involved too, and the accusations are flying—many of them attached to decades of gossip, because why use claws when rumors land the harder punch?
I pick my way through the threats and occasional scuffles until I make it to the set of couches where a lot of my family are already sitting. Watching the show, not participating in it.
Yet.
“Has this been going on all morning?” I ask, watching an Ohio wolf hurl himself through the air to land on the neck of a South Carolina wolf, who does not take being tackled with anything like grace.
They’re encouraged to deal with themselves by the bucket of water tossed over them by a dour-looking old granny from Missouri.
“You’re acting like you need housetraining,” she tells them in disgust. “For shame.”
“This shit has been going on since last night,” my brother Micah tells me.
He’s sitting on one of the couches, an arm casually extended along the back and his new mate at his side. She doesn’t lift her gaze, but thatdoesn’t necessarily mean anything about her personality. It’s considered good manners to keep a downcast eye in the presence of higher-ranked wolves, and a newly mated female of a younger son in a new family is considered the lowest status there is.
Micah continues, “We offered to replace anything that’s missing, just to shut everyone the fuck up, but it didn’t help.”
“In my day,” Aunt Sigrid says with a sniff, “no one woulddreamof behaving like this in another wolf’s den. Much less on the solstice during a gathering. It’s embarrassing.”
For a change, the rest of my aunts appear to agree with her.
My mother is standing with her arms crossed, peering out at all the bad tempers around her. After a while, she turns back to me, her cool eyes assessing.
“To the casual observer—” she begins.
“Since when are you casual?” I ask.
“When have you ever been casual?” Micah agrees, and we both laugh.
I realize, with a jolt, that this is the first time I’ve been around this many members of my family in quite a while without one of them jumping down my throat about myintentionsand mydestiny. It feels like a sea change, but I don’t want to call attention to it.
My mother shoots a quelling look at both Micah and me. “This is manufactured,” she states in her unvarnished way. “Someone is clearly invested in a bloody solstice tonight. I won’t be the only one who thinks so, either.”
Micah lets out a grunt, a noise that neither confirms nor denies what my mother said. But something in the way he does it tells me that this is probably something that was already discussed in private. Between Ty and his lieutenants.
That means there are fail-safes in place.
It also means that Ty is really going to do it.
That sizzles in me like gasoline, and there’s nothing to do but let it burn.
“If there’s blood,” I say with perhaps a little too much intensity of my own, because I’m only made of flesh and blood myself and this is getting to me too, “I hope Ty spills it. And may the inevitable deaths of those who challenge him serve as a warning to others.”
For the first time in a very long while—maybe ever—Johanna nods at me, her cool eyes actually ... approving?
“How bloodthirsty,” one of my softer aunts tuts. “Must we always take the lowest, most animalistic road? Are we truly no better than a pack of rabid street dogs?”
But everyone else is grinning.
“A blood call requires a blood answer, Gretchen,” my mother says crisply, and now I canhearthat approval too. I’m tempted to get a little silly over it, but that would reverse any approval in a hurry, so I suck it up. “We’re wolves, not lapdogs.”
