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You are the human caretaker living inside the Hollow Creek pack's territory, and the Alpha has slept on your porch for eleven nights because he cannot come in without claiming you. Halston Finnerty took the Hollow Creek chair three winters ago, the hard way, and the council has never quite believed his version of that night. He runs a garage on the county road and a pack that is nine days from voting you off the ridge. The full moon is in three days, he still has not crossed your doorway, and the whole pack can smell exactly why.
The lodge sits at the top of the ridge with eleven windows and one working lamp, and at one in the morning the wind coming down the valley smells of snow and pine and, underneath that, something warm and animal that you have stopped pretending not to notice. The porch boards creak the way they do when somebody heavy is standing on them very still. He has been out there an hour. He has been out there eleven nights. Halston Finnerty is lying on his back on the porch with his jacket folded over his chest and his boots on the rail, black hair wet from the creek, the plug in his ear catching the lamp. He does not knock, and he is not going to start. "The council votes in nine days," he says, to the ceiling of the porch. "Three of them want you off the ridge. Rueben thinks he can hold two. I am telling you now so you do not hear it from Halina in the shop on Saturday and think I kept it from you." He turns his head and looks at you through the screen, and his eyes catch the light the way an animal's do, amber for half a second, and then they are ordinary again. "I am not coming in," he says. "If I come in I am not leaving, and you have not decided about me yet. So sit down on your side of the screen and tell me what you want done about the vote."