The Choice

Nobody moves until Tormod Greyfell turns his back.

He does it slowly, like a man making a point, and wades back across the Ashwater to the far bank. One by one the wolves on that side melt into the timber after him. The last one to go is a sleek black she-wolf with green eyes who looks at you a long time before she follows.

Then it's just the river, and the woman standing in it, and whatever is breathing in the trees behind you.

"Brann," she says, without turning around.

A man steps out of the lodgepoles. He is enormous, six and a half feet of beard and shoulders, barefoot and in nothing but a pair of canvas work pants, and he's holding a flannel shirt out in front of him like an offering. She takes it and shrugs it on over the bite, and you see her jaw tighten once as the cloth touches the wound. That's the only sign she gives.

"Get his truck back to the station," she says. "Keys?"

It takes you a second to realize she means you. You dig them out of your jacket and hold them out, and Brann takes them with a hand the size of a skillet and gives you a look that is more curious than hostile.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"You're bleeding."

You look at your palm. "So is she."

Brann's eyebrows go up. He looks at Ulrika. Ulrika looks at the trees. Brann goes.

"Walk," she tells you. "My truck's up the bank. Stay on my left."

"Why your left?"

"Because if anything comes at you, it comes at my right hand first."

You walk on her left.

Her truck is an old green Ford with a dog crate in the bed and a rifle rack with no rifle in it. She gets in on the driver's side and doesn't start it. For a while the two of you just sit in the dark with the windows fogging, listening to each other breathe.

"Your shoulder," you say.

"Is fine."

"It's not fine. I watched him bite it."

"I heal fast." She turns her head and looks at you, and in the dash light her eyes are gray again, no gold at all. Up close she's younger than you thought. Late twenties. There's a pale old scar along her collarbone like a second necklace and a dusting of freckles across her nose that does not match anything else about her. "Ask."

"Ask what?"

"Whatever's going to make you jump out of this truck in the next five minutes. Ask it now, so you don't."

You laugh. It comes out cracked. "Okay. Were those people wolves?"

"Yes."

"Are you a wolf?"

"Yes."

"How long have there been wolves in my valley?"

"Longer than there's been a valley with your name on the map." She says it without any pride. "Two packs on this river. Oakhart on the east bank. Greyfell on the west. Twenty-six years ago, after some trouble, we signed the Accord of Ashwater. The river's the line. Neither pack crosses it. And no human who sees what we are walks away to talk about it."

"Walks away," you repeat.

"That's the polite version."

"What's the other version?"

She doesn't answer, which is an answer. You look at your hands. The left one is still bleeding into your jeans.

"So why am I alive?"

"Because there's one exception." She grips the wheel, though the truck isn't moving. "An alpha can put a witness under her word. It means I answer for your silence with my life. If you ever tell, I'm the one who pays. And while you stand under my word, no wolf on either bank can touch you without fighting me."

"You just met me."

"I know."

"You don't know if I'll talk."

"I know that too."

"Then why?"

She looks at you a long moment. Something moves behind her face and doesn't come out.

"Because he was going to kill you for walking down to a river," she says finally. "And I'm tired of this valley killing people for that."

You don't know what to say to that, so you say the thing you've been wondering since the ford. "How did you know my name?"

She reaches over and taps the brass tag above your shirt pocket. It's been there so long you forgot it says anything.

"It's on your shirt, ranger."

You look down. You actually look down, like an idiot, and when you look back up she has turned toward the windshield, but you could swear one corner of her mouth moved.

"Here's the part that matters," she says. "Listen."

"I'm listening."

"My word is protection. It's not a leash. It only holds if you accept it, out loud, at my Hall, in front of witnesses. You don't have to."

"What happens if I don't?"

"Then I drive you to Missoula tonight. I put you on the first plane anywhere you want to go. You never come back to the Bitterroot. You never say a word about tonight, to anyone, for the rest of your life. Greyfell won't follow you out of Montana. Probably." She lets that sit. "It's a real choice. I'll make sure you get there alive either way."

"And if I accept?"

"You stay inside Oakhart bounds until this settles. The east bank. Your station's on it. You can work, go to town, live your life. Just not across the river. And you put up with my people watching your back."

"Until it settles."

"Yes."

"When does it settle?"

She's quiet. "I don't know."

You think about it. You try to, anyway. Your whole body is still shaking in small aftershocks, and your palm throbs in time with your heart.

You think about Missoula, and a plane to anywhere. You think about never seeing this valley again. The ford where Clyde taught you to fish. The station where you grew up doing homework at the dispatch desk. The little cemetery above Ruby Gulch where he's buried under a lodgepole you planted yourself.

"My dad's buried here," you say.

"I know."

"You know?"

"Clyde Nettleton. Everybody in the valley knew Clyde." She says the name carefully, like it weighs something. "He was a good ranger."

"He was a good dad." You look out at the dark where the river is. "I'm not running out of my own valley because some guy with a grudge bit you. I'm staying."

She turns and looks at you full on. It is like having a lamp turned on you.

"Say it again," she says, "and mean it."

"I'm staying. I'll accept your word. Whatever I have to say at your Hall, I'll say it."

She holds your eyes a beat longer. Then she nods, once, and starts the truck.

"Thank you, Ethan," she says, so quietly you barely hear it over the engine.

Oakhart Hall sits on a bench of land above Cutbank Creek, a long timber building with a stone chimney and a porch that runs its whole length. Every window is lit. There are trucks in the yard. Thirty, forty people stand on the porch and in the grass, and every one of them turns when the headlights sweep over them.

Ulrika kills the engine.

"Stay on my left, Ethan," she says.

You climb out. The smell of wood smoke and wet grass and something else, something animal, hits you. The crowd parts for her, and closes behind you.

A man steps off the porch into her path. Dark hair, sharp jaw, the kind of handsome that knows it, wearing a leather jacket over nothing. He looks at the blood on her shirt, and at you, and at her again.

"You warded a human," he says. "In front of Greyfell."

"I did, Sindre."

"Then hear me, Alpha." He says the title like it tastes wrong. "Give him to Greyfell tonight. Or at the next moon, I challenge you for this pack."