Chapter 9: The Trail

For four nights after the bath, Granger practiced standing.

He did it at the kitchen counter after the strays went to bed, with the curtains shut.

Ten seconds. Then twenty. Then a full minute, white-knuckled, with me timing him on my phone.

"Again," he'd say.

"Your legs are shaking."

"So are yours. You ran eight miles today."

"Six."

"You're shaking anyway."

Every night I slept with my hands on his legs. Every morning there were two more clean handprints.

Neither of us said a word about the bathtub.

We both thought about it.

I could tell when he was thinking about it, because he stopped talking in the middle of sentences.

On Wednesday, Wanda sent me up the Founders' Trail alone.

"Walk it, don't run it," she said. "From the Lodge gate to the creek crossing. Learn every root. I want you to see it with your eyes shut."

"Where are my wolves?"

"Your wolves are cutting firewood for my winter. You've got two legs. Use them."

The trail climbs out of the Lodge meadow through lodgepole pine, so thick it's dusk at noon.

I walked it slowly, counting turns.

Nine switchbacks to the first saddle.

A split boulder at the fourth.

A spring at the sixth.

At the seventh switchback, Jagger stepped out of the trees.

He was in jeans and a T-shirt, barefoot. He hadn't made a sound.

"Scouting?" he said.

I stopped.

"Go away, Jagger."

"It's my trail. I'm Alpha." He smiled the wide easy smile I used to love. "I came to talk."

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