Chapter 6

We can’t stay any longer.” My best friend’s gentle tones broke into my misery. “If we don’t get going, we won’t have time to get settled before winter.”

“Can you believe this used to be our home?” Because I couldn’t. Where once there had been nothing but open ranch land, a developer had placed their stamp. And by stamp, I meant over a thousand housing units. Mostly single “ranch-style” homes and townhomes, but a few apartments as well, with a centerpiece of a shopping center complete with Walmart and Olive Garden and half a dozen fast-food outlets. Among other things. Basically, those who lived there might never have to leave the development unless they wanted to. There was even a two-story medical-dental office structure.

Everything new and shiny and made of materials created in factories. The landscapes were bespoke or maybe tailored or something to the clients who purchased them. Carson Valley’s natural high desert environment was suffering terribly under current drought conditions, and I couldn’t understand how they were allowed to put in those acres of rolling water-guzzling lawns.

It killed me to remember how much care my mate—no, my friend and I had put into the drought-tolerant plantings around our home. Thick mulch made watering even the vegetables minimal. Native flowers and trees and shrubs thrived from the moment we put them into the ground.

Time to stop my wolf from thinking of Nikki in a way he’d never shown interest in. We’d been friends practically since birth.

“I’m ready.” I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes to keep the tears from coming. It would serve nothing, and I’d already grieved long enough. “Let’s go home.”

“Feels strange, doesn’t it? To think of the pack again?” He shouldered his pack and stretched out his back.

“And without our families.” We’d been in the Valley since we were eight, both of us, the last time a drought struck the mountains. That time, Carson Valley had not been hit as hard, and the human economy had been thriving. “But my dad has no reason to leave his shop. He’s such a craftsman.”

“His art is known far and wide, but it would be really difficult for his best pieces to be delivered from the middle of nowhere.” There wasn’t exactly a paved road leading to our lands. “I’m kind of wishing we’d made a trip or two home.”

“Yeah. Think we were too stubborn?” I grabbed onto the change of topic because thinking about our loss was just too painful.

“Probably.” Nikki took a step away. “If we’re going to be far enough into the mountains to find a good camping spot tonight, we need to get going.”

He was right, but my feet felt like they were stuck in the concrete they’d poured over our sweet potato bed. My throat was swelled nearly closed, and anger warred with grief. We’d actually bought that plot of land from the rancher who owned it…or at least we thought we had. When he sold the whole ranch to the developer, it turned out, the paperwork had never been put through for our purchase, and he told them we were just tenants.

Who were soon evicted.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

Nikki came back to stand beside me. “What alternative do you see? We’ve lost our investment in the property, and even more when we tried to fight it, so unless we want to stay at home with our parents, we’d have an awfully hard time finding a place to live.”

“I know. And while they are glad to have us, it just feels wrong to do that long-term. We need to make our own life, and I thought we had.” Not entirely the life I’d hoped for us, but at least a good time building something.

“Let’s go, my friend.” He reached for my hand and pulled me away from where I’d been stuck. “We’ll build in a new place. The pack lands are our ancestral home, and maybe that’s where we really belong.”

“You’re right.” I let him pull me, regretting when he dropped my hand. How long had we known each other that I still wished he’d notice me as more than a friend?

Once we were off the ranch, some of the feeling of being stuck eased, and I felt a little better. Not a lot, but that was all right. Nikki and I had been hiking and camping together all of our lives, and so I felt comfortable with the idea. Maybe if I convinced myself that it was only a hike, only a camping trip, I could brave the first day or two of travel before facing the reality that everything we’d built together was ruined, and we were starting fresh.

And maybe while doing that, I could try to reach acceptance that I would not be his mate.

I couldn’t stay.

Or so I had to tell myself with every step along the trail. I had to leave, to strike out and find another pack to live with because the alternative was not the future I sought. In fact, there was no future whatsoever in the Cross Creek pack.

The alpha’s insistence on keeping us in the past had led to nearly every young person and many older than that choosing to leave the pack in order to find a happier existence somewhere else. Not that we wanted to get away from our traditions, but there were numerous conveniences we yearned to adapt to our needs.

Like plumbing. Of the indoor variety. The alpha said we didn’t need it, and I suppose he was right. We certainly could survive without, but why should we want to? At least, that was the general consensus. What could it hurt to pipe water into the homes so we could bathe and wash dishes and do other useful things without having to carry buckets from the spring or one of the wells every time we wanted to make soup.

Family obligations had kept me here this long, but they no longer existed, which was why I currently stood on the ridge over the pack lands, looking down on the village where I’d spent the first twenty years of my life. The houses from above appeared a little run down, dilapidated even, but the thought of leaving made my throat swell with grief. Sure, it was the right choice, but that didn’t make it easy.

So many memories.

My home still stood. Empty and sad, in the first fingers of dawn’s light, almost calling to me, but there was nothing there for me. Not anymore. I’d heard of packs where the alpha matched people up with their mate, an old-fashioned tradition that would have been popular here I had no doubt, had anyone stuck around to let the alpha do it.

But there was nobody to match me with or for me to find myself here. If I stayed, I would never find my true mate. He was not here. How could he be? Nobody who stuck around here was single, at least now that I’d walked away.

Hours later, as I reached ten then eleven thousand feet, the chill closed in around me. This late in the fall, there would normally have been a thick layer of snow up here. Heck, we’d have had a foot or two of it frosting the ground at home. But with drought conditions sparking fire danger everywhere in the mountains of California, Nevada, and elsewhere, there was only a slight bit of it icing the very highest peaks above me.

Not that the lack raised the temperature of the air or the ground. The items I had packed did include most of my clothing, certainly all of the warm pieces, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from hypothermia if I slept out in the open. I decided to press on, reach the pass and hope to find a cave or other place to shelter. I had a few nights of this, and dying on the first one after waiting so long to make a move and start my new life sounded like a really bad idea.

I went back and forth from feeling good about my decision to wanting to run home and crawl back into my little house. Nostalgia made things better, and I knew that, but images of our little family gathered around the table on a night like this, laughter and the clank of silverware against plates providing music sure seemed pretty wonderful to me. Sometimes my brother would play his guitar, but we didn’t all sing. My mother tried to make us, but we thought it was silly.

I wish I’d sung.

I reached the pass just as the sun went into its disappearing act into the ocean to the west. On the western slope of the Sierras, we had the ocean in our sights, but the Triple L Ranch would not. This could be my last view of the Pacific for at least a while. Maybe forever.

Drama queen much?

I turned from the orange ball fanning its light over the waves, the bobbing dots of sailboats and a tanker far out to sea. Those aboard would see places I could only dream of. Having had a really minimal homeschooling education, my knowledge of where those places might be or in many cases, what they were called was laughable.

But what I did know was where the various packs in these mountains were located. A few we’d visited, and representatives of others had come to us over the years. Each seemed to have a slightly different culture from the others, and I listened carefully when we had campfires and the guests would talk about their homes.

Some were very modern and actually drove almost right up to us in cars and pickup trucks. They were usually connected to the grid, had jobs in the human world, and their kids even went to school with humans. Others lived a more off-the-grid life but still had so many conveniences, I was ashamed of how we accomplished daily tasks.

Plodding through the pass, in places narrow enough that my shoulders brushed the walls, I remembered one man who’d talked about how one of the females of their pack had run away from an arranged marriage only to marry into the Triple L hierarchy. The fellow’s outrage had touched the heart of our alpha who agreed that she should have been followed and dragged back by the hair. Forced to follow her alpha’s ruling. At that point, there had been a moment when he’d commented that he needed to find a mate for me, if not here, then somewhere. Luckily, it was too much trouble to bother, and he never mentioned it again.

Shadows filled the stone notch, becoming full darkness before I reached the other side. I needed to find somewhere to sleep, soon. Stars were dotting the sky, forming a jeweled fabric that seemed to blanket the earth. Cold beauty.

Triple L had never visited us themselves. So I only had the stories of others to make me think that it might be the paradise I sought. A place where females were respected and the alphas nurtured the talents and skills of their pack members. And where someone like me might be allowed to stay. I’d offer to do anything they wanted, for this permission.

My abilities were probably not valuable. I could cook and clean, and I’d raised chickens and other poultry for eggs and meat. I enjoyed baking when ingredients were available. And, once, when we’d gotten some wool, way back when I was a little girl, my mother taught me to weave. We carded and dyed and did all the things to create the blanket that filled too much of my pack. But I couldn’t leave it behind. Her loom had been painful enough. Standing in the corner, unused for so long, it was still her prized possession.

Beginning my first descent, I watched for any little cave or alcove that might provide shelter but found nothing, and my teeth were chattering. I could shift and be warmer but not and carry the heavy pack. So I continued down the stone face and into a stand of pinyon pines.

They were heavy with cones, a good source of pine nuts, if I’d had a way to carry them. And processing them took weeks. Perhaps there was a faster way, but I only knew the one we used at home.

At my former home.

If the goddess willed, Triple L would be my new home.

Finally giving up on finding any real shelter, I was surprised and pleased to find a broken-down shack, only held up by the saplings sprouting through its grayed-board walls. The door had fallen in, so I needed no key, and the whole thing was in too much disrepair to make considering a fire for warmth safe. Everything was tinder these days. But it would block the wind, and I dug out all my warmest garments prepared to put them on when I realized how silly that was. Instead, I found the blanket Mother and I had woven, cleared a space of as much natural debris as possible, and laid the blanket out to provide a layer of protection from the cold ground. I removed all the clothing I wore. Shivering hard now, teeth clicking together, I shifted into my fur and curled up into a tight ball.

My wolf was quiet, had been all day, even now when in ascendance. She didn’t like the idea of leaving our pack. It went against the grain to do so, against her instincts, so I didn’t press her to keep me company.

I’d never felt so alone.

Maybe we should have stayed in Carson Valley.

At least we could have retreated to our individual family homes and made a fresh start. Market gardening had been a great idea, and as we’d delved into native plantings and permaculture, food forests, and all the other concepts being espoused by farmers and gardeners, we’d made real progress toward independence. Our folks had helped with the initial investment, and the loss of everything we put into the ranch was also theirs. That rankled.

The pack lands were isolated and would not provide the best options for earnings in many ways, but neither of us had the heart to remain where we were. Or to move home to our moms and dads like irresponsible teenagers on their first foray into the world.

Leaving this late in the season meant we would be lucky to have a chance to prepare any garden beds at all before the ground froze. The average winter temperature up there in the mountains was nothing like the one we’d become used to in Carson Valley. Hiking up into the foothills in the late afternoon, that fact became rapidly obvious.

“Did you have a stopping point in mind?” Dan adjusted the straps of his pack on his shoulders. “It’s getting chilly.”