The coffee had burned down to sludge before dawn, and I was in the back room with my back against the flour bin, letting a man I did not know kiss the hollow of my throat. His name was Daniel. That much I had gotten out of him between the first cup and the second. He had a room at the boarding house on Mill Street and hands that knew where to rest without asking twice, and he smelled of diesel from the trucks that ran the valley road at night. A woman of thirty-two could do worse than a stranger who did not talk about the coal company, and I had been right. He did not talk at all. He breathed against my neck and pressed me into the flour bin, and the bin rocked on its warped floorboard, and I had to reach back and steady it. The diner was empty. Mabel would not come in until six. The valley sat under a low fog that turned the windows into grey squares, and the only sounds were the coffee pot ticking as it cooled and Daniel's belt buckle knocking the wood. "You are going to leave a mark," I said. "That a problem?" He lifted his head just enough to look at me. Brown eyes, a jaw that needed a shave, and a mouth that turned up at one corner like he had already won something. "Only if Mabel sees it and decides to pray for me." "She prays for you anyway." "She prays for the diner. I am included as furniture." He laughed, low, and kissed me again, and I let him, because the front door was locked and for ten minutes nobody in Blackridge County needed anything from me. His hands slid to my waist. I slid my fingers into his hair. The flour bin rocked, and a puff of white dust came up off the lid and settled on his shoulder, and I brushed it off, and he caught my wrist and pressed it flat against the lid, and then the bell over the front door rang. Daniel froze. "Nobody's open," he said. The bell rang again, a slow metallic jingle, the way it did when a person pushed the door and then stood holding it open. I eased Daniel back and pulled my collar straight. My lipstick was somewhere on his jaw. I wiped it off with my thumb. "Stay here," I said. "That's a customer?" "That's a customer. Sit down and drink your coffee and do not come out until I say so." I walked through the swinging door past the counter and the pie case that had not held a pie since Tuesday, and I stopped when I saw the wolf. It filled the space between the door and the first booth. Its shoulders came to the height of my hip. Its back was a long grey ridge under the fog light, grey with a darker line down the spine, and its head was the size of a bushel basket, and its eyes were amber and fixed on me. The door swung shut. The bell jangled once more and went quiet. I did not scream. My hands went cold and my mouth went dry and I stayed exactly where I was, one hand on the counter, because the diner had a shotgun under the register and the register was nine feet away and the wolf was closer to it than I was. "You are not a dog," I said. The wolf sat down. It sat the way a person sits, with its weight settled and its front paws together, and then the air around it changed. The fog light bent around the shape of the thing, and the shape narrowed and rose, and the grey fur pulled back into skin, and a man was kneeling on the linoleum with his hands braced on the floor. I knew him before he raised his head. I knew the set of those shoulders, the champagne blond hair neat even now, the high cheekbones and the crooked half smile that came up when he finally looked at me. "Miss Calloway," Wade said. "Get out of my diner." "Nora." "Get out of my diner, Wade. I have a shotgun and I know how to use it, and I did not use it on the wolf because I thought I was dreaming." "You are not dreaming." He got to his feet slowly. He was taller than I remembered, and he wore the same clothes the wolf had come in with, a worn leather jacket and a miner's scarf and boots that had been in the mud of the valley road, which made no sense until I understood that it made every kind of sense. He brushed off his knees. "Your grandmother died last night. The burial is tomorrow at the ridge. The pack needs you to come home." "You have lost your mind." "I have lost my uncle's patience, which is worse. Nora, listen to me. The Blackridge Pack has no Alpha. Your grandmother was the last one, and she named you before she died." I laughed. It came out wrong, too high and too fast, and I heard Daniel shift his weight in the back room and prayed he would stay put. "I am a cook," I said. "I have been a cook for eleven years. I am a widow. I have never shifted in my life and I do not intend to start, and the last time I checked, the Blackridge Pack was a story my late husband's family told at Christmas." "Your husband knew." "Andrew is dead." "And he knew." Wade's voice was measured, and there was something underneath it, some pressure, like a boiler with the valve screwed down. "He knew what you were. He knew what your grandmother was. He married you because of it, and I am standing here now because there is no one else left to tell you the truth." The fog light flickered. The coffee pot ticked. I thought about the shotgun, and I thought about how Andrew had never once let me meet his grandmother. Not once, in six years of marriage. She sent a jar of preserves at Christmas and a card with no note, and Andrew said she was too old for visitors. "Daniel," I said, without turning around. "Go out the back." The swinging door opened. Daniel came out with his shirt half tucked and a look on his face I had seen on men before, the one that says I did not sign up for this. He stopped when he saw Wade. "Who the hell is this?" "Nobody," I said. "Go." Daniel looked at Wade. Wade looked at Daniel with a calm that made the hairs on my arms stand up, and then Wade said, "You should go," in a voice so pleasant it could have come off a radio, and Daniel went. The back door banged. A truck engine turned over in the alley and faded down Mill Street, and I was alone with a man who had been a wolf four minutes earlier. "All right," I said. "Start again. From the beginning, and this time leave out nothing, because I am going to have questions and I do not have the patience for a man who answers them with riddles." Wade reached into his jacket and took out something small and silver. He laid it on the counter between us and slid it toward me, and I looked down at it and my stomach dropped. It was my grandmother's crescent moon pendant. I had seen it once, as a child, in a photograph Andrew had shown me and then taken back. "She wore it to the burial of your mother," Wade said. "She wanted you to have it before the funeral. She told me to bring it to you and tell you that the spring is failing and the road is closed and the pack will not last the winter without a wolf who can stand in the water." I picked up the pendant. It was warm from his pocket. "I do not know what any of that means," I said. "You are the Alpha now," Wade said. "Whether you want it or not." I opened my mouth to tell him where he could put his pack and his spring and his silver pendant, and then the back door banged again and Mabel's voice came through it, sharp as a fork on a plate. "Nora Calloway, there is a wolf scent all over this kitchen and a stranger's shirt on the flour bin, and I want an explanation before I put my apron on." Wade looked at me. I looked at the pendant in my hand. "Anyway," I said, and neither of us believed me.

Mabel stood in the back doorway with her apron half tied and her grey hair still in its night braid. She looked at Wade, then at me, then at the pendant in my hand. "Put that down before you drop it," she said. "It belonged to your grandmother and it is older than this diner." "You knew," I said. "I knew." She finished tying her apron and came through into the front. She walked past Wade to the coffee pot, poured the sludge into the sink, and set about making a fresh one. "I knew before your husband did. Sit down, both of you. I am not going to explain a thing with you standing there like a pair of herons." I did not sit. Wade did, sliding into the third booth with his back to the window, and Mabel brought the pot over and set three cups down with a clatter. "Start with the spring," she said. Wade wrapped both hands around his cup. "The Blackridge Pack has lived under this valley since before the coal companies came. Our territory runs from the ridge to the river, and it has one water source that matters, a spring in the deep shaft that flows for a shifted wolf and no one else. Two winters ago it began to slow. Last month it stopped for eleven days and started again when my uncle's wife walked into the water. She is not the Alpha. She has no claim. It flowed anyway, and that frightened him more than the drought did." "Your uncle," I said. "Silas." "Silas is the Gamma. He has run the valley since my father died, because there was no Alpha strong enough to hold the road. He controls the trucks and the food that comes in. Every family in Blackridge owes him something, and he collects." "And my grandmother was the Alpha the whole time." "Your grandmother was the Alpha until last night. She was ninety-one and she had not shifted in a decade, and she still held the valley by law and by name. Nobody could take it from her while she lived." He looked up at me. "She is dead. The claim passes to her blood. Her daughter is dead. That leaves you." The coffee was hot and bitter and I drank it anyway. "I have been here eleven years," I said. "I cooked for this town. I went to church with these people. I never heard one word about a pack or a spring or a wolf in the water, and I am supposed to believe you now because you turned into a dog in my diner?" "A wolf," Wade said. "There is a difference." "Not to me." Mabel sat down across from him and folded her hands. "Nora. Do you remember the summer you were seven and you came back from the woods behind the church covered in dirt with your dress torn and your hands red?" I set the cup down. "I remember finding a stray and getting scratched." "You did not find a stray. You shifted for the first time on that hill and something went wrong with it and you blacked out. Your grandmother carried you home herself and cleaned you up and made every one of us swear to keep it quiet. She said your mother had already lost one child to this valley and she would not lose you too. She sent you to Charleston before the month was out. You came back eleven years ago and had no idea what you were." The kitchen clock ticked over the sink. I could hear the fog truck on Mill Street, gears grinding as it laid its salt, and the sound seemed very far away. "I am not a wolf," I said. "You are," Wade said. "You have been a sleeping one. The wolf is there and she has not come out yet." "Then she can stay where she is." I went behind the counter and started stacking the clean plates Mabel had left drying. My hands were not steady and the plates clattered, and I hated that both of them could see it. "I do not want a pack. I do not want a spring. I do not want a woman I have never met telling me from her grave that I owe her my life. I want to run my diner and I want your uncle to stop watching this building from his truck." Wade's cup stopped halfway to his mouth. "He watches the diner?" "Every morning at four he drives past slow and looks in. I thought he was checking for burglars." I put the last plate down. "Mabel, what does the pack want from me?" Mabel looked at Wade and then at me, and for the first time that morning she looked her age. "The pack wants an Alpha who can open the spring. The road is closed, Nora. Silas has his men on it and the mine office locked, and he is telling everyone that until the claim is settled the valley belongs to no one and nobody eats. There are eleven families down there with children, and by December there will be nothing but cold rooms and empty pans. Your grandmother knew. She told Wade to bring you that pendant and tell you about the water." I thought about the winter the diner had almost closed, and the way Andrew had gotten quieter and quieter about his family. "If I say yes," I said slowly, "what happens to my diner?" Wade set his cup down. "You keep the diner. You keep everything. I am not asking you to sleep in the pack house or lead a hunt. I am asking you to sign a mate bond with me." Mabel made a noise in her throat. "The bond makes you Luna of the Calloway Pack and me Alpha of the Blackridge Pack by marriage. It gives Silas no legal ground to hold the road, because the road runs through my territory and my territory would be yours by bond. It buys the valley a winter to find a new Alpha, and it lets me walk into that mine with you and open the spring before everything freezes." "That is a business arrangement," I said. "That is exactly what it is. You want your diner and I want my pack fed. The bond does not require affection. It requires consent and a mark." "And if I refuse?" "Then I go back down the road and tell Silas the claim is vacant, and he will bring in the mining company to buy this valley out from under eleven families. He will call it a mercy, and in three years there will be a pit where the spring was." I came around the counter and stood over him. He did not get up. "You have a lot of nerve," I said, "walking in here and telling me that the only thing standing between my neighbors and a hole in the ground is my neck under your teeth." "It is not your neck. It is your shoulder." He met my eyes. "I do not like this either, Miss Calloway. I am offering because there is no other road open." Then he pulled his scarf aside and showed me the collar of his shirt, and there was a pale mark there, a curved line of old scar in the shape of teeth. "My father tried this once," he said. "With a woman who did not want him. She broke the bond in a ritual and it nearly killed him. I have not forgotten what that cost." "You think I would break it?" "I think you are stubborn enough to try. I am telling you what it costs so that you go in with your eyes open." Mabel put her cup in the sink. "I am going to open the diner," she said. "People will come in hungry at seven and they will ask why the road is closed, and I am going to tell them to ask their Gamma. You two have until the coffee runs out to decide what you are." The front door opened and a man I had never seen before came in, big and red-haired and broad, and he stood just inside the door with the fog at his back. Wade stood up fast enough to rattle the table. "Ret." "Silas wants her at the mine office," the red-haired man said. He did not look at me. "He says if she is going to be Alpha, she can come and say it to his face before the county hears it from somebody else. And he says to tell you the road closes at noon." I looked at the clock over the counter. It was ten past six.

I left Mabel with the diner and rode down the valley road with Ret in a truck that smelled of wet canvas and old feed sacks. Wade followed in his own truck, a green Ford with a cracked windshield, and I watched him in the side mirror the whole way. The fog had lifted enough to show the mine tipple on the left, black and rusted, and the row of company houses with their porches sagging and their wash lines empty. Curtains moved in two of the windows as we passed. "Where are the children?" I asked. "Inside," Ret said. "Silas told the families to keep them in until the claim is settled." "Until I am settled, you mean." Ret's hands tightened on the wheel. He had a broad face and red hair that stuck up at the crown, and he did not answer me. The mine office sat at the fork where the valley road met the state highway, a long shed of grey boards with a stovepipe and a padlock on the door. Six men stood along the fence with their hands in their pockets. Silas stood on the porch with his silver hair combed back and his coat buttoned to the throat, and he was smiling before I even got out of the truck. "Miss Calloway," he said. "You look well for a woman who has just inherited a graveyard." "I am not here to inherit anything," I said. "I am here to sell." The smile did not move. "Sell what?" "The land. The mineral rights. Everything my grandmother owned in this valley. I want to sell it to the company and I want to do it today." Silas looked at the men along the fence and then at Wade, who had come up behind me. "You hear that? She wants to sell." "Put the papers on the table," I said. "I will sign them and you can open the road and I can go back to my diner." Silas stepped down off the porch. He was tall and his coat was good wool, and he smelled of pipe smoke and something sharper underneath. "There is a difficulty," he said. "This land does not belong to you." "It belonged to my grandmother." "It belonged to the Blackridge Pack. Your grandmother held it in trust as Alpha. The deed is not in her name and it is not in yours. It is in the name of the pack, and pack land can only be sold by a sitting Alpha with the consent of the Council of Alphas. You are not a sitting Alpha. You have not been confirmed. You have not even shifted." He said the last word the way a man says a child has not yet learned to read. "So there is nothing for you to sign." "I do not believe you." "Then ask him." Silas tipped his chin at Wade. "Ask the Alpha of the Calloway Pack whether pack land can be sold by a widow with a pretty pendant." Wade's jaw worked. "It cannot," he said. "Not without the Council." "Then what am I supposed to do?" My voice came out louder than I meant it to, and one of the men along the fence turned his head. "I have eleven families in this valley who cannot buy flour and a road that closes at noon, and you are telling me the law will not let me fix it?" "The law will let you fix it," Silas said. "You have only to be confirmed as Alpha. A first shift before the Council, a mate bond to a recognized Alpha, and the claim is settled. I have already sent word to Charleston. The Council will convene in three weeks." "Three weeks." "Three weeks. Until then the road stays closed and the valley stays empty, and you may sit in your diner and think about whether you would rather be an Alpha or a cook." I stepped closer to him, close enough to see the small scar under his eye. "Why do you want this valley empty so badly?" "Because the company pays well and the pack does not." He said it without heat, like a man quoting a price. "I have fed these people out of my own pocket for nine years. You think I enjoy it? I am offering them a way out that does not end with wolves starving in a hole in the ground. You should be thanking me." "You are charging them for the food." "Of course I am charging them. Nothing in this world is free, Miss Calloway. Not food, not water, not a wolf in the water." He turned away and walked back up the porch steps. "The road closes at noon. If you want it open before the Council convenes, you will do what your grandmother did and take a mate. I hear the Calloway boy is available." Wade moved then, one step, and Ret moved with him, and for a moment the two of them stood between me and the porch. "Enough," Ret said quietly. "Silas, the men are watching." Silas laughed. It was a warm sound, an uncle's sound, and it made my skin crawl. "I am fond of you, Ret. Do not make me remember that you are also fond of her." He went inside and shut the door and the padlock clicked. I stood in the road with my hands shaking and the fog burning off the tipple and the six men along the fence not looking at me. Wade touched my elbow and I pulled away. "Not now," I said. "Nora." "Not now, Wade." I walked back to Ret's truck and got in and slammed the door, and I sat there with my hands in my lap and my heart going like a rabbit's. Ret got in beside me. He did not start the engine. "There is something you should know," he said. "About the road." "What about it?" "It does not close at noon. Silas has had a man on that gate every night for two months, and the gate has never been locked. He keeps it open and he tells everyone it is closed, and the families believe him because he is the one who brings the flour." Ret stared at the windshield. "My sister died in this valley eight years ago. Silas told me Wade's pack was responsible. I have been his enforcer ever since, and I have been asking myself lately whether he told me the truth." I looked at him. His broad hands were still on the wheel and there was a muscle jumping in his jaw. "Why are you telling me this now?" "Because you are the first person in nine years who walked up to him and asked him a question to his face." He turned the key. "The gate will be locked tonight. He will do it to prove a point. If you want to get a truck through before then, you should do it in the next hour." We drove back up the valley road in silence, past the empty houses and the tipple and the mouth of the deep shaft with its black timber frame. Wade's truck followed the whole way, and when Ret stopped in front of the diner, Wade got out and walked over to my window. "The Council will not confirm you without a first shift," he said. "Three weeks is not enough time for a sleeping wolf to wake. I have seen it take months." "Then I will have to be a fast learner." "Nora." He put his hand on the door frame, and the amber of his eyes caught the grey morning light. "There is another way. The bond would confirm you without the Council, because a mated Alpha needs no other witness. It is the only road I can offer that does not end in a locked gate." "You are persistent." "I am desperate. There is a difference, and I would like you to remember it when you decide." He stepped back and I got out of the truck. The diner's windows were lit and Mabel was inside with her apron on, and the smell of bacon came out through the door. I turned to say something sharp to Wade, something that would put him in his place, and then I stopped. The gate at the fork was visible from the diner porch. It was a quarter mile down the valley, and the morning had cleared enough to see it plainly. There was a new truck parked across it, a black one with a company seal on the door, and a man in a grey suit standing beside it with his hat in his hand, looking up the valley toward us.