horseshoe nail driven into the back of my sku

d push him off me, hard, and roll away into the wheat, and I came up on my knees with my knife out and my wolf a

d not

at I could see he was longer than the fence posts, and his back was broad and pale in the dark. He was barefoot. He had no clothes on at all. His hair was the color of

again. He did not. His hand twitche

breathing and a cow somewhere off to the west. I got up slowly, keeping the kn

of stubble, and his mouth was pressed tight even with his face in the dirt. His eyes were closed. His skin was cold-looking, blue at the lips,

e and cedar and warm skin and something else I could not name that made my throat ache. My wolf went still. She went so still that I put m

n my experience, quiet

aid. "You.

hing like the stories I had heard from the older wolves at pack bonfires. It was heat. It was a slow, deep heat that started at my fingertips and went up my arm and into

t loud, to nobody

saw h

long time ago. I looked at it for a while in the dark and I told myself it was nothing, and then my eyes found the other

the co-op truck when he was nineteen, and he had a round burn on the back of his neck from

gh that the cow out west stopped making noise and

gro

head in the dirt and blinked slowly, and then he saw me, and he went very s

f honey held up to the sun, and in the dark they ca

d. "Do not move, and

"You are a wolf," he said. His voice was rough and l

you a q

s," h

as w

with his face in the dirt. I did not help him. I watched him do it a second time and fail, and then I watched him l

re your

on

e wh

h one eye, since the other was half in the dirt. "I wake up like

a little. Not much.

miled. It was a tired thing, and it went away f

ld's yard with four blade cut

it, and he put his forehead down on th

ld eat what

ere hungry. I am not. I have not killed anything in this count

d my knees and the dark mill behind him, and I believed him

shaking

ld since Tuesday, and the nights are getting longer, and

was five

es

k, and at the wheat, which was quiet, and I thought about Dale and his two licensed hun

u walk?

his head.

en

fence post bent, and he got up straight, and he was taller than I had guessed. Much taller. He kept one hand o

said. "It is my brother's. It is

erst

o-op floor, and if you try anything, I will put this knife in

thing in them that I could not read. "I understand you," he

g in a field for five days should have. He did not ask me my name. I did not offer it. The co-op yard was dark

e back for when Harold sleeps off a double shift, and I took the army coat off the peg and handed it t

d he sat on the c

ome, with his clean shirt and his smile. He was something else. His face had been put together with a lot of straight lines, and his jaw was square, a

id

," I said. "The one on

l again. "Wh

did you

neteen," he said. "It is an old t

I was suddenly very tired, and I said, "My brother had that scar

ked at me, and his jaw worked, and

," he

ast the lamp rocked. "H

aid. "And I have been trying

of one, and his shadow went all the way to the loading dock.

t again,

" he said. "I was the

he office window and over both of us, and through it all Elias sat on the cot in my brother's coat with the g