The meeting place was a farmhouse three miles east of the ridge, on land that backed up to the Backs along its eastern edge. It was an old place — the house itself was 1940s, maybe earlier, cedar-sided and settled into the ground the way old buildings settle, comfortable in their age. There were lights on inside, warm against the gray October evening, and a truck in the gravel driveway and a well-used woodpile against the north wall and a barn that looked like it was still in actual use.
Rook met her at the gate. He looked less composed than he had at the coffee shop — not nervous, but aware, the way people are aware when something they've been managing is about to be tested.
"They know you're coming," he said. "They've known since Friday." He held the gate. "They can smell a new wolf a week out."
"Reassuring again."
"You'll smell them, too, once you're inside." He glanced at her. "Pack scent is — it'll make sense when you're in it. It's not unpleasant."
It wasn't unpleasant. It was actually almost aggressively comfortable, which was its own kind of disorienting — the moment she stepped through the front door, her nervous system did something that felt like sitting down after standing for a long time. Something that recognized itself as coming in from the cold.
There were five of them in the main room. She would come to know them all — would come to know them the way you know the rooms of a house, each one with its own particular character and light — but that first night she took them in as a tableau, all at once.
Callum was in the chair by the fire, and she knew him immediately: mid-forties, broad, white-haired, with a face that had the specific topography of someone who has spent a lot of time outdoors and a lot of time thinking. He looked at her when she came in with those pale eyes, wolf-pale, and something in the room shifted.
"Mara Vasquez," he said. His voice was low and even. "You made it."
"I did." She stood in the doorway between the entry and the main room. "You bit me."
"I did." He didn't apologize. "You were drawn to the stone. You held out your hand." He tilted his head. "I've been the eldest for thirty years. I've met seven people who reached that stone. You're the first to hold out your hand."
"What happened to the other six?"
"They ran. Sensible choice." He almost smiled. "Sit down."
The others introduced themselves in turn. Petra, who was in her thirties, compact and precise, with a fighter's economy of movement and the air of someone who is almost always the smartest person in a room and has made a private peace with it. Luka, who was Petra's younger brother, twenty-two, gap-toothed, with the loose amiability of a person who has found their people and settled into the ease of belonging. Nadia, who was Callum's daughter — Mara could tell before they said, something in the bone structure, something in the stillness — twenty-six, quiet, with hands that were always doing something, knitting or peeling or rolling a stone between her palms. And Jin, who was the newest before Mara, twenty, Korean-American, who had been bitten two years ago and who Mara locked eyes with across the room with the particular recognition of someone who has had a parallel experience.
Jin caught her look and gave a fractional nod that said: yes, me too, and also: you'll be okay.
Rook took a seat at the edge of the circle. "Pack," he said. "This is Mara. She's Vasquez-line. She made it through the first moon. She's asking all the right questions."
"The Vasquez-line," Callum said. "We've waited a long time."
"Don't make it mystical," Petra said, from the couch, not looking up from the mug she was holding. "It freaks new ones out."
"It's accurate."
"Accurate things can still be poorly timed." Petra looked at Mara. "Ignore him when he gets prophetic. He does it about twice a month. We all just wait it out."
Callum made a sound that was almost, but not quite, a growl. Petra's mouth curved.
"Sit down," she said to Mara. "You want tea? Luka made something that tastes like bark but is apparently excellent for what's happening to you."
"What's happening to me?" Mara sat.
"Your body is rebuilding itself." Petra finally looked up. "It's like a construction site in there. You need calories and sleep and things that taste like bark. Welcome to the pack."