The Last Wolf + Giveaway
Title: The Last Wolf
Author: Maria Vale
Series: The Legend of All Wolves #1
Pub Date: February 6, 2018
ISBN: 9781492661870
For three days out of thirty, when the moon is full and her law is
iron, the Great North Pack must be wild.
If she returns to her Pack, the stranger will die.
But if she stays…
Silver Nilsdottir is at the bottom of
her Pack’s social order, with little chance for a decent mate and a better
life. Until the day a stranger stumbles into their territory, wounded and
beaten, and Silver decides to risk everything on Tiberius Leveraux. But
Tiberius isn’t all he seems, and in the fragile balance of the Pack and wild,
he may tip the destiny of all wolves…
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Maria Vale is a journalist who has
worked for Publishers Weekly, Glamour magazine, Redbook, the Philadelphia
Inquirer. She is a logophile and a bibliovore and a worrier about the world.
Trained as a medievalist, she tries to shoehorn the language of Beowulf into
things that don't really need it. She currently lives in New York with her
husband, two sons and a long line of dead plants. No one will let her have a
pet. Visit her at https://www.mariavale.com/.
EXCERPT
In which Tiberius
eats dinner with the hostile Pack and learns that not everything that is small
and cute and furry is a puppy
Upstairs, the screen door opens
and closes with a slam. Orders are barked out, and heavy treads stomp back and
forth between hall and kitchen. As the Pack passes the stairs to the basement,
the complex fragrances of the dishes they’re carrying waft down to us. Benches
start scraping across floors, and I push Ti’s extra clothes into a bag and push
the man himself up the stairs.
As soon as we reach the hall,
the smile I hadn’t even known I was wearing fades. The Alphas of every echelon
are standing around the heavy hand-scraped tables, each one of them holding
tight onto their seaxs, the sharp daggers that all adult Pack wear at their
waist.
There are strict penalties for
attacking a table guest, and John will kill anyone who tries, but edgy wolves
are edgy wolves and not always in control. I am this man’s shielder, and I face
them, my thighs coiled low, my shoulders squared, and my lips curled back from
my teeth, so these wolves know that I will fight, even in skin.
Tock, tock, tock.
Behind me, Ti is not even facing
the right way. He’s looking at the table, opening up casseroles with one hand,
while flicking his spoon up and down against his bowl with the thumb of the
other (tock, tock, tock). As though there weren’t a hundred evil-eyed
wolves staring holes into his back.
He lifts a hand-thrown lid and
sniffs the saag paneer. Another basket with bread. A selection of Corningware
casseroles hold cauliflower and lentil stew; sun-dried tomatoes and fresh
cheese; corn chowder. Pasta with herbs. Egg salad.
“So…you’re vegetarians?” Ti says
to no one in particular.
“Not vegetarians,” John answers.
“But not carrion eaters either. You are our guest,” he says loudly to
remind all the wolves with itchy palms about our very ancient and very strict
rules of hospitality, “and free to hunt anywhere on our land, but Shifter? You
must eat what you kill.”
“John?” I whisper, pulling at
his elbow, and he bends down. “His name?”
John scratches his graying beard
for a moment before pointing to one casserole dish in Blue Onion pattern.
“Tiberius?” he says, “My personal favorite is the cauliflower and lentils. Be
sure to add some toasted hazelnuts.”
Someone coughs, but John has
broken the spell, and the Alphas reclaim their seats. Though when they do, they
seem to have doubled in size, their broad shoulders and thighs now claiming
whatever spare space we might have squeezed into.
I bend my head toward one of the
empty tables. Those too will be full when the Offlanders come home for the Iron
Moon, but for now, we sit there alone, side by side. The Pack starts talking
again, bent low over their food because our table manners at home are not all
they should be.
Naturally, there is a lot of
talk about Ti, and while no one will question John’s decision, it is one of the
peculiarities of the Old Tongue that the word giest means guest and
stranger and enemy, so when someone speaks of our new giest, everyone
understands the double meaning.
Then John says that’s enough Old
Tongue for now.
A handful of pups scrabble up
the stairs from the basement storage. They’re chasing something, taking wide
frantic turns around the room.
“Mouse,” I whisper to Ti. “They
don’t last long here.”
“She didn’t take me down,”
Eudemos complains loudly.
“I mean, I was still standing.”
He hacks at the big loaf of bread with his seax. “Where’sa butter?
“I neber submided,” he insists,
a pale-yellow crumb flying across the table. He uses his thumb to push the
mouthful back in. “If what she did counts as submitting now, I think we should
change the laws, thass all I’m sayin’.”
“Deemer?” says John.
Victor, our Deemer, our thinker
about Pack law, crosses his arms and looks at the ceiling for a moment. “The
law does say an opponent must be pinned down,” he says. “But while Eudemos was
not down, he was very definitely pinned, and that is the more important part of
the law.”
“Your Alpha agrees. The spirit
of the law was upheld.”
And with that, Eudemos will not
say another word about the matter.
The mouse finally caught, Golan
trots up to John, followed by a roiling mass of fur. He lays his tiny prey at
the Alpha’s feet. John looks at it, making sure the kill was clean and the
mouse didn’t suffer, then he scratches Golan’s ear and wishes him good eating.
Suddenly, Ti jumps and lowers
his hand to fend off a juvenile, who has her damp nose in his crotch.
“Rainy!” shouts Gran Moira.
“Come here!”
Rainy cocks her head to the side
and stares up at Ti before running off.
“Why do you have so many dogs?”
Ti asks, his legs now tightly crossed.
“Nooo,” I hiss.
“They’re not…” It’s too late. He didn’t say it loudly, but our
hearing is very good, and one set of very good ears is all that’s needed. One
by one, the Pack falls silent, appalled by what Ti has called our children.
Four fuzzy snouts peek over the
arm of one of the fireplace sofas. Other pups glower down from the curved
stairs that lead up to the children’s quarters.
Then the only sound is the
brittle crunch of Golan’s sharp, white teeth.
“Excuse me, Shifter?” pipes a
small voice. A ten-year-old girl with long, pale-brown curls, wearing shorts
and a much-washed blue T-shirt with a picture of a pickle on it, scratches the
back of her calf with a bare foot. “I am sorry I smelled your crutch?” she
says, glancing back at Gran Moira, who mouths the word crotch with an
encouraging smile. “But that’s what I said. ‘Crutch.’”
“It’s ‘crotch,’” corrects Gran
Moira.
“Oh,” Rainy says, turning back
to Ti. “I am sorry I smelled your crotch? I didn’t mean to be offensive. I am
just in the Year of First Shoes?”
The Year of First Shoes is the
first twelve moons in the juvenile wing, when you’re too old to scamper around
and be fed tidbits from the table, and you’re too young to see even the
remotest advantage to being human. It’s when we first wear shoes and clothes.
It is a terrible, terrible time.
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