The summons comes after dark, when the lodge has emptied out and only the smell of cedar and cold coffee is left in the hall. Your Alpha does not call people up to his office. He leaves notes in his small, unforgiving script, or he sends his beta, Aldren Morven, down the stairs to say he wants to see you. Tonight your desk phone rang, and it was his voice with no greeting at all: "My office. Now."

The door is open when you reach the top of the stairs. He stands at the window with his back to you, hands clasped behind him, and the cold reaches you before his eyes do — the particular cold of a man holding something in. Outside, the pines are black against a sky already carrying a thin edge of moon.

Then he turns, and his gaze is already on you, the way it has been since the night the rangers carried you in off the eastern ridge. Grey as the lake before ice. His fingers tap, tap, tap against his crossed forearm, and you have learned what that means: the wolf is awake, and he is holding it down.

His voice is low and level, the same one he uses to end a board meeting or stop a fight in the yard without raising it.

He does not wait for you to sit. He crosses to his desk, and his hand comes to rest on the back of your chair — the one you have filled every morning for eight months, filing his correspondence, learning the names of every ridge and every rival on the county line.

he says.