Chapter 10: Itemized

Moonstone runs on the first Saturday of the month, and the new bride is expected to shift in front of everyone.

"It's tradition," said the woman who handed me the duffel bag.

"Of course it is."

The bag was for my clothes.

Sixty wolves stood in a ring on the north lawn, each with a numbered duffel at their feet.

I found a hedge at the edge of the ring and stood behind it with my bag and my dignity.

"Not that hedge," Dottie called. "That's the same hedge."

"There's only one hedge."

"Then stand somewhere else!"

I took my clothes off behind the hedge and shifted for the first time since I was a teenager.

I am a small brown wolf, the size of a Labrador, with one white ear.

I came out from behind the hedge, and sixty wolves looked down at me.

Lucan's wolf was black and enormous, with silver eyes, and he sat at the head of the ring without moving.

I trotted up to him.

My tail started to wag, and I could not stop it.

I lay down on the grass and rolled onto my back.

Somewhere in the ring a child said, quite clearly, "She's so little."

Lucan lowered his huge head and nosed my stomach once, and every wolf in the circle drew a breath.

Then we ran.

It was the first thing that had felt good in three days.

The whole pack streamed down through the woods behind the estate, under old trees, along the river.

I was slow, and I was happy, and Lucan matched his pace to mine the whole way.

When we circled back, the ring had broken up.

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