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"Welp, here they are, then," said Dad.

Paul's bags were packed. He'd done that before sunrise. Wallet and ID. Toothbrush, toothpaste. Utility knife with pliers, screwdriver, and can opener. Scarf he'd knitted, wool he'd sheared himself, that year he'd honestly tried to make peace with the idea of staying. First aid kit, including aconite antidotes. A few changes of socks and underwear, and a spare pair of jeans--he wasn't planning on getting much use out of those. Two brushes, the package the latter had come in said it was the 'Furnihilator' and was recommended for large or shaggy coated breeds. Foldable atlas, in which Mom had painstakingly marked the locations and addresses of every pack she knew of, all over the country, even in Mexico and Canada.

He'd left behind all the state fair ribbons for '3rd Prize Ewe Such-and-such A Year' and '1st Prize Lamb Such-and-such A Year,' those were nothing to him, but the 'First Place' medal, with the picture of a smug-looking sheepdog, he'd pinned to the strap of his backpack.

That one meant he'd been good enough to fool a whole state fair worth of humans, even their judges. He was still proud of that.

But he hadn't wanted to have the bags out with him on the porch. That felt risky, like tempting the world to send someone, some unearthly B. of E.P.M. agent, to ask where he thought he was going? What pack did he think would take him? He'd have to admit he didn't know. So when he'd heard the engines coming down the highway, he had to scramble upstairs. He grabbed the duffel bag and backpack from the bedroom: his for over nineteen years, but which he'd only ever enter again as a guest.

By the time he got back down, there were four motorcycles on the driveway. There was the smell of gasoline, road leathers, dust, and wolf. And there were werewolves, who had all at some point been introduced to him as some variety of 'uncle,' standing on the porch or under the twisted locust tree.

Ready to take him away.

"Well," Mom hugged Uncle Harve, "I guess it's past the point where it matters if I like it or not."

"A wolf's gotta disperse, Julie." Dad squeezed her shoulder, before taking his turn to hug Uncle Harve himself. "I guess we saw this coming long enough ago."

"I guess we did," she surrendered.

Uncle Harve turned and met his eyes through the screen door. "Hey Paul," he said, "Hope you're more excited about this trip than your folks."

"Sure am," Paul fought to keep the grin from taking over his face, and for that matter to keep his face from slipping into a muzzle, fangs, and fur. "We can go right now if you want!"

That wasn't happening, of course. Mom had to fuss over him. Dad had to stand looking off at a forty five degree angle and tell him to be careful out there. After that there were all the things to arrange about the bikes.

"You riding with me, Pup?" Dan said.

"Uh," Paul wasn't sure how he felt about that nickname. "I guess I assumed there'd be a... spare bike."

Martin choked back a guffaw just in time. Paul felt his ears burn.

"Well, it takes a while to learn to ride one of these, and the only spare bike the pack even owns is Miles's old one, and that's up on blocks in the garage back in Michigan." Dan rubbed the back of his neck and looked anywhere but at Paul. "Don't worry, Pup. It ain't hard to stay aboard, I put on the sissy bar for the tail seat and everything."

"The what bar?!" Paul barked.

"You know if you're having second thoughts, honey, you don't gotta go," at the merest hint of wavering purpose, Mom was leaning halfway over the porch railing.

"I mean I guess it is a little insulting," Dan muttered.

"We can get you a bus ticket up north," Mom said over him.

"I mean that's just what it's called."

"There's nothing wrong with waiting, hun!"

"It's fine, Mom, really!" Paul yelped, a little too loudly, and the whole world fell into the awkward silence that was left when other voices were cut off.

"Guess it really is time, huh?" she finally said.

"Happens to us all someday, Julie," said Uncle Miles, which was the first Paul had heard him speak up.

"Suppose it does," she wrung her hands. "Well, you all at least got time for a little lunch before you go."

Paul opened his mouth, but he saw the way Uncle Martin's face brightened, and the look Uncle Miles shot him, and so didn't object. Thus did Julie, one last time, get to take care of her son, under the guise of hospitality that demanded nobody go on their way without a few helpings of twice-baked potatoes, noodles and meatballs in white sauce, and toffee bars.

Miles and Dan sat very close. At one point Miles brushed buttery crumbs from the corner of Dan's mouth, licked them off his own thumb.

Paul averted his eyes from what felt like a prophetic vision... assuming, that is, he chose to join his uncles' pack. Assuming they let him. Assuming this was a thing packs did. Assuming Paul could imagine himself in Dan's place. Or Miles's. More answers he didn't have.

"Now, you're gonna want to keep an eye on the weather," Dad had less direct options, for his last chance to be a parent, "and stick close to Miles and Dan. Martin too, I guess. Don't go off alone or nothin. Don't say nothing to a B. of E.P.M. agent, ever, less you got a lawyer in the room with you. A non-human one at that. You got the number for that vampire firm in Salt Lake in your emergency list. And, well, be careful, you know?"

"It's alright, Pete," Uncle Harve clapped the concerned rancher on the shoulder, "they got it covered. So," his face looked much less sure of that as he turned to Miles. "You got a route?"

"Sure do," Uncle Miles nodded. He somehow seemed larger, in general, than Paul's memory said he should be. "Head west till we hit US 138, that'll take us most of the way. By the time we gotta leave it to miss Denver, it'll be time to strike out for the mountains anyway."

"Sounds good," Harve nodded. Paul paused, backpack lowered into the hard trailer behind Martin's bike but his hands still on the straps, listening to something probably not meant for him. "You find anything... fishy about this whole thing, you grab eachother, especially the pup! And get out, ok?"

"It'll be fine, Harve," Miles pulled Harve into an embrace. The older wolf laid his head on Miles's shoulder. "If this is what it says it is, then it might be the best thing to happen to American wolves since the Endangered Species Act."

"And if it's not?" Harve's concerns were muffled into the leather of Miles's jacket.

"Then it's more'n likely just an overpriced camp, and most wolves'll cuss at them and turn around for home again. We'll be right there with them." Miles met Paul's eyes, and the younger wolf looked away hastily.

His parents walked out to the gate with them. Miles took the lead. Paul clung to Dan from behind, hopeful that wherever his hands had landed was ok, because now he was actually on the bike he was much more aware of how small the footrests were and how narrow the seat was, insultingly-named backrest notwithstanding. Martin grinned "take care, old man!" at Harve before he revved his engine so that no response could be heard.

The threshold of time between 'ready to go' and 'going' rolled closer, agonizingly slow, until suddenly it was past and they were gone.

Paul couldn't resist looking back. The acres of pasture where he'd roamed for years looked suddenly very small, now they were his no longer. Among them vanished the only pack he'd ever had.

So far.

They waved, and refused to shed tears, until he was out of sight.

"So, what's this thing we're heading for?" Paul finally got a chance to ask when they stopped for gas in Julesburg, just over the Colorado border.

"Well pup," Miles had insisted Paul drop the 'uncle,' "you hear any rumors going around about something called a 'Great Pack?'"

He hadn't.

Their hard edged shadows on the whitewashed cinderblock wall were not yet taller than Paul and Miles, but they would be soon. The hour lingered on the border between afternoon and a midsummer evening that would start late and stay long. The light was used to being the color of honey, it hadn't yet noticed the touches of crimson seeping into it like the first silver hairs mixed among a dark pelt. The only sounds were the drone of the highway across the concrete drainage ditch, the chanters of the grasshoppers, the staccato beat of a sprinkler oscillating, and the faint polyphony of large windchimes somewhere. Behind the gas station, across an expanse of struggling lawn, relaxed a line of houses, yellow paint wind-blasted to beige, south facing windows covered with aluminum foil, with only the occasional battered miniature wooden windmill beside the kitchen door, or string of long-dead christmas lights dangling from the corner of the porch for finery, all content to relax in unashamed lower-class leisure and stare imperiously at any travelers who dared step around the side of the gas station to devour a cigarette, buy a bag of ice, or talk about werewolf matters. Beyond those was nothing but acres of cornfield.

"Last fall," Miles chewed his lower lip a moment before starting his answer, "rumors started there was something going down. At first we heard it was just one pack in Arizona, then it was a couple packs getting together, then it was this meeting between packs. The location kept changing, too, I guess as the headcount kept growing and they needed to find bigger and bigger places."

"So there is," Paul felt his ears try to turn into something that could prick up hopefully, "a big enough place now?"

Miles shrugged. "Suppose we'll find out. Rumor is some wolf who owns a wilderness preserve or something volunteered to host the whole thing. By now they'll've invited every werewolf in the whole country, if they can make it, which I don't even know how many that is."

"Ok but," Paul hesitated, "why do you sound like you think that's a bad thing?"

"Let's just say," Miles sighed, the way you sigh when you realize you have to fix a handbrake that you've already fixed five times this trip, "that one of my jobs in the pack is trusting the Bureau of Extrahuman Populace Management the least. And if I were an agent, and I wanted to pull something on all the werewolves in the country, then the first thing I'd do is make up some reason to get us all in one place."

Paul's body tried to flinch away in every direction at once. "You don't think-"

"I don't, actually." Miles held up a reassuring hand. "Harve did, but he's gotten a bit suspicious in his old age. More likely it's somebody who listened to that nutcase, couple years back." He didn't explain who 'that nutcase' was. "All it'd take is running into another wolf who listened, and then it just snowballs."

Paul didn't really feel like he understood where they were heading any better than before he'd asked.

But then, he asked himself, did he have to? The smell of the world open in every direction around him, of being a wolf in his own right, being free, grew stronger each breath he took. The highway was roaring, the wind was blowing, the shadows around him were lengthening and he imagined them expanding into night, with a rising moon, and then he could shift and run with his-

With... this pack. Into the night and be free.

And if Paul wasn't there yet, he was on the journey there, assuming this Great Pack thing was what it sounded like Miles didn't fully trust it to be. That was just as exciting.

"What the hell's taking them so long?" Miles looked sharply around the corner of the building. "I swear, if they're blowin' eachother in a shower stall..."

Miles retrieved Martin and Dan from within the truck stop. They both looked like they'd gotten away with something.

They came from every corner of the land, though most of them, had they been asked, would have been surprised that any but their own pack was making this journey.

If you howl loud enough, clear enough, the wolves will come. It's just instinct.

Shaggy and thick-pelted they came, from the guilty seaside cliffs, calm and slow of speech, the smell of cold fog in their undercoats and the bitter memory of puritan trials in their hearts. Sleek and raucous from the bayous and salt swamps they came, sunglasses and swimsuits over short fur, ready to live joyously as do the beasts that perish only before wolfsbane or silver bullet. In desert-worn buses they came, chartered with pooled money, from the pitiless concrete cities whose foundations are sand and stolen water, bearing sun bleached pelts and strong opinions on which film depiction of werewolves was most ridiculous. From the cathedralic forests of the rain-gentled northwest they came, in lumberjack-striped hooded sweatshirts and mud-baptized hiking boots, feasting on thermoses of coffee and the occasional invasive species, for they believed in ecology, in direct action, and in introducing predators to restore the natural balance of an environment.

Through the jagged deserts they came, lonely hitchhikers in beat-up hats and bannerlike ponchos big enough to conceal the unexpected ear or tail, many in coyote-like defiance of the shambles of wall human governments presumed sufficient to keep them out, smelling their way by night through yucca, tumbleweed, and ghost town to spare their eyes from the vehemence of the sun, or emerging like ghosts themselves from the shimmer of heat mirage, from time to time taking silent acceptance of a few miles ride in the rusted bed of a passing pickup, but only a few, unless scent and instinct recognized wolf in the driver, then would they slowly band together in growing packs of convenience, like rivers gathering the barest trickles as tributaries, backwards through the canyonlands.

From the mild-mannered north they came, from towns left abandoned by failed gold rushes or the search for the northwest passage, in sensible vans and comfortable RVs, endearing accents in their taciturn growls at any mention of oil pipelines, carabiner and coil of parachute cord at the ready to hang clothes and belongings from a handy tree, bobsled teams and loup-garou and the specific silence of a night's heavy snowfall each a part of their heritage, confident that no matter how long they stayed in the arrogant south, their own country would be too polite to do anything but welcome them back with a nod.

From the thunder country they came, from abandoned factory and condemned grain elevator, with windblown fur and the leavings of the dust bowl behind their ears, in station wagons that should have been allowed to die with dignity decades ago and rust to pieces in someone's front yard, windows rolled open to rest heads on the sill, stick faces into the wind, and howling, when they howled, like tornado sirens.

From the reservations they came, as cynical as ever, as optimistic as ever, driving beat up jeeps through lands their ancestors had traveled freely whether on foot or on paw, some bearing petitions complaining of B. of E.P.M. agents and casual violations of tribal sovereignty, some bearing stories, built of oral tradition and wishful thinking, about which pre-colonizer nations would have accepted werewolves, would have had a place for them in their societies, but all bearing in mind that a settler cannot cease to be a settler by becoming a wolf.

From the sunset-kissed coast they came, in second-hand school busses painted with phases of the moon in phosphorescent acrylics, some with nursing pups in arms, some with guitars over their backs, some who disdained clothing even in human form, but all with flowers in their fur, and intoxicated on the hope that all the packs might come together, and hold all that they had in common with one another.

From the glacier-crowned, purple-majestic peaks they came, grim and taciturn, loners, dwellers in cabins that had never tasted electricity, who stalked their daily meals on grounds nigh-parallel to the stunted trees in forms, and sizes, that even a grizzly would shy from, only resuming human disguise to descend on the nearest town and collect the next month's bottle of whiskey, and if their route there was not so long as the crow flies, none would dare say that it was easy.

And among them all came Paul, clinging to the back of the wolf he hoped to stop calling uncle and begin calling brother, but who still called him pup. Dreams of a pack where he could belong, as his true self, and never need put on his human mask again, beckoned him all the way like a rainbow over the horizon.

"I dunno," Martin tried to block the setting sun with a paw in the air. The house they were both trying to look at was almost exactly beneath it, "I'd guess that's the wolf they're talking about, the host. Guy who owns this whole place." Martin gave up squinting as futile and turned away. "Looks like the kinda basic cabin these wilderness loner types usually like."

"Should we," Paul set down the bag he'd been handed, from the trailer Dan and Miles were unpacking, "go say thank you or something?"

"Hell no," Martin snorted. "With how many wolves are here, if we all started trying to do that? He'd run howling, and only right to. Naw, I'd bet he's gonna just mingle and not tell nobody this's his place. I wouldn't."

"Why," Miles emerged, growling, "is the tent packed furthest back in the trailer?"

"Ryan packed it," Dan shrugged, "Chew him out when we get back."

The change in the road had been abrupt, at the border between plains and mountain range. From straight and cardinal to winding and wild, as stark a difference as human and wolf. To Paul, who had lived his whole life used to a world of precisely fifty percent sky and fifty percent ground, with a level and undisputed border between them, the mountains around which the bikes wove their way had seemed to hover overhead, in a way where the size of them was a palpable thing.

They smelled dry, and rusty, and of whatever morning condensations found all the shaded hollows where the sunlight didn't reach.

By the time the road had wound them past a place whose signs insisted was a town called 'Rustic,'--though Paul saw only a single building, undeniably a rustic one--it became unmistakable that the other cars on the road weren't just other cars.

They were fellow travelers.

It was partly the way they watched eachother, watched the motorcycles, without looking at them, as if their instincts were comfortable running at top speed in the close proximity of a pack. It was partly the scent, uniquely unmistakable even under gasoline and road dust, of wolf. But mostly it was that the fierce, hungry, longing somewhere in each expression wasn't fully human.

It was like looking in a mirror you were passing at 60 miles per hour.

Finally in a valley that curved gently up around all of them, like the bottom of a broken terracotta bowl, empty spaces ready to be filled with campgrounds and first aid tents and show pavilions and food trucks spread out below as if all the state fairs in the nation had been mustered together into an army encampment, the masks came off. In pickup, in van, in convertible, in bus, echoed joyous howls as each crossed some instinctive threshold and knew it to be safe to shift.

Paul, Dan, and Martin all glanced back, hopefully, at Miles, expecting gruff disapproval, but Miles was already shifted himself, under his jacket, and grinning like an excited puppy. And what more permission could anyone ask for?

They arrived at the Great Pack as wolves.

For that moment, at least, it had been everything Paul had dreamed of.

But now he was holding aluminum pegs for Miles as he set up the tent--large enough for a pack of eight, Martin had said--he felt doubt stalking him. It was no secret that the three wolves with him shared, well, a bond. He'd known them all as 'uncles' because, well... their whole pack of eight only needed the one tent, so to speak. And how was he, a virgin too nervous to say it more plainly than "shared a bond" and "only needed one tent" even inside his own head supposed to find a way to fit into something like that?

But he had to try, didn't he?

"Uh, what are the plans for.. tonight?" he held out the next pegs to Miles.

"Well," Miles was too focused on fitting the peg through the canvas loop to look up, "Actual events don't start till tomorrow. Probably a good idea to walk around a bit, get the lay of the land." He cursed at the rocky ground. "If I can ever get this fucking tent up, that is!"

"I mean like... what are you guys... intending to do?"

"Uh," said Martin, "I'm gonna heat up stew and make dutch oven biscuits, once the fire's ready?"

"I can't believe," Dan held the tentpoles up while Miles continued cursing at them, "you lugged that heavy hunk of cast iron all the way out here."

"You can't go camping without dutch oven biscuits!" Martin insisted, "and I'm the one who was pulling the trailer, so I can bring what I want in it!"

"No, I mean like... later tonight." Paul prayed he wasn't blushing.

"I guess we usually turn in around midnight?" Dan blinked in confusion, then his face lit up, "Oh! Right, it's your first time off the ranch, really! You wanna explore! Yeah, no problem, we can check out whatever you wanna see!"

"You think," Martin wondered, "that they're gonna set up rides?"

"For cubs, maybe." Miles finally convinced the flexible fiberglass poles and polyester loops to cooperate and the pile of crumpled canvas assumed the shape of a tent.

After which they were all too busy laying out sleeping bags and getting everything inside arranged, so Paul had to accept his plate of stew and biscuits--and he would have to admit to Martin they were delicious--still ignorant of whether they were going to spend the night in eachother's arms, whether he'd be expected to join, whether he'd be welcome to join, or whether he wanted to join.

There were, it turned out, no rides, even for cubs.

But there were strings of christmas lights: over the tables, inside the booths, strung above the pathways, mostly white, but with the rare eccentric blue, green, or magenta among them, witness to a fateful day when there'd been no other replacement bulbs.

There were survival kits packed on the assumption you could sleep anywhere and find your way by smell but might need antidotes to chocolate or onions, tools sized for either a hand or a paw, hand-sewn clothes with plenty of elastic to shift in them. There were snacks, most of them dehydrated meat ranging from jerky to freeze-dried beef liver. There were activists talking about inter-pack mutual aid, with corkboard maps on which colored yarn connected pushpins in pack addresses, some of which Paul recognized from his mother's lists. There was a non-profit extrahuman legal defense organization with pamphlets and phone numbers of sympathetic lawyers local to various states. There were carnival games, supposedly with all the rigging mechanisms turned off, though Dan said he didn't believe it.

There were fortune tellers, promising to read all sorts of things in the downy pink inside of a pointed ear, in the timbre of a howl, in the smell of the scruff of your neck: from romance to prosperity to how the next full moon was going to hit you. And it would've been a lie if Paul had said he wasn't tempted, because what if they could tell him where to look for whatever would be his place in whatever would be his pack? But then, if that was how he found it, wouldn't he spend his life wondering if he'd really found the right place?

There was a demonstration of soothing oatmeal shampoo for those unfortunate enough to still have an allergy to animal dander, even after shifting, and pamphlets advocating health research for werewolves, by werewolves, or warning that Just Because You're Immune To Rabies Doesn't Mean You're Disease Proof. Across from that was a large banner that read 'Solidarity Now!' over testimonials on posterboard that said things like "Fracking destroys our homes just as much as yours," from Ufthak McBolg of the Hopkinsville Delegation of Goblins. Or "Tailypo was Right" from Tanassi, Southern Band of Water Panthers. Or a long, rambling, pointless anecdote, claiming to own the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, arguing it could be a haven for 'shapeshifters of all kinds,' that was only signed with a raccoon's pawprint.

There was every type of craft, as if a dog show and a farmer's market had made an ill-advised but passionate marriage. There was handmade jewelry, all of it guaranteed 100% silver-free. There was a fur stylist armed with electric clippers, shaving rebellious patterns into shoulders or chests that couldn't, practically speaking, be tattooed. There was a blacksmith, tiny anvil, portable forge hooked up to a propane tank, thick protective apron over his fur, who didn't seem to be selling or doing anything that had anything to do with being a werewolf. But he was one, so nobody seemed to think that was a problem.

There were scented candles, in a variety of scents like: excited crowd, abandoned house, concealed squirrel, and a whole rack of regional variants of petrichor. "Mom had a ton of these. Dad used to order them from somewhere for her birthday," Paul mused. "I never really saw the point."

"Well, you were born like this, yeah?" Dan put down the Petrichor: Ozarks candle of which he'd taken an experimental sniff. "You grew up with the wolf in you."

"What does that have to do with mom's weird candles?"

"Ohhh, didn't anybody-" Martin began.

"You don't know?" Dan interrupted excitedly. "Pup, you've got no idea how much my mind was blown, when I first got turned, and suddenly I could smell this kinda stuff. Before I wouldn'ta picked up anything but hot wax!"

Paul tilted his head. "What?"

"Humans can't smell any of these things, pup." Martin explained.

"Wait, humans can't smell," Paul looked down, baffled, at the candle in his hand, "an excited crowd? How... do they tell if a crowd's excited, then?"

There were wolves standing up very straight, ears perked, tails wagging, all wearing collars and tags with their names. One of them looked excited when Paul made eye contact, but Miles made a pained noise and abruptly stalked in the opposite direction.

"We didn't ride all this way to get preached at," Martin sounded less annoyed than Miles, but equally embarrassed. Which was apparently all the explanation Paul was going to get for now.

But that didn't matter, because there were so, so many food trucks. According to Dan it was a very common job for werewolves--it let you move around, let you set up anywhere, let you make a living without a neighborhoodful of humans trying to get to know you. Paul had more different kinds of tacos that night than he'd had all the rest of his life.

There were beer tents. Milles initially wouldn't let them get one for Paul, but Dan and Martin guilted him into it. The wolf manning the keg didn't ask how old he was. "You're shifted, man," he grinned, "that's all I need to see."

It was almost enough to distract Paul entirely from his worries, but almost enough was in some ways worse than not at all. It made the thing he was worried he'd never get seem all the more precious.

"You feeling all right, pup?" Dan's paw landed on his shoulder. "Was that beer a bad idea?"

"Oh! Uh, I'm fine," Paul wasn't. "Just... a lot on my mind."

"Like what?" Dan took a place beside him on the hay bales that had been hauled up to serve as benches. Miles and Martin were out of earshot, doggedly pursuing and with increasing frustration some trinket at one of the carnival games that wasn't supposed to be rigged.

"I'm worried about finding a place, you know?" Paul confessed. "Like... I've wanted, all my life, to go out and find a pack where I could live like a wolf, right? I guess I thought it'd be, like, automatic once I left home. And then I thought it'd be automatic once I got here. But now I'm here and it hasn't happened and I don't know what to look for and I can't think of any more things to come where I can believe it'll be automatic when they happen!"

"Ok, calm down," Dan patted his ears, which did help. "Julie gave you that list of addresses, right? You could try them."

"That just tells me where they are. What if I go all the way, only to find there's no place for me?"

"If all else fails," Dan assured him, "our pack is always gonna have a place for you."

"I..." Oh good, the other question he'd been trying to avoid thinking about, "I dunno. Aren't you all... you know?"

"Aren't we all?"

"Don't you all... uh..."

Dan was getting more confused by the second.

"You're all... together, right?"

"...that's what a pack is...?"

"I mean you're all gay! You all have sex!" Paul was immediately terrified he'd just shouted that, but it turned out it had been a whisper.

"Is that," Dan said very carefully, "a problem for you?"

"What? No! No, no not like that, I just..." Paul pulled his knees up to his chest. "I don't... know if I am. If I could do that. If I want to. And I don't like the idea of trying to be part of a pack if I can't... be part of the way that pack is a pack. If you know what I mean."

"Ok," Dan said, "you realize, that's not usually something you care about for joining a pack? When I got turned, I was just grateful I'd finally have a roof over my head and know where my next meal was coming from."

"I know, I know, I should be grateful to just-"

"That's not what I mean!" Dan barked, "I mean... Ok. You remember Ted?"

"Uncle Theodore?" Paul cast his mind back to puppyhood, to an avuncular, grizzled-grey werewolf who had showed up to christmas morning even after a blizzard had snowed the ranch in completely. "Yeah."

"Well, in case you never knew, he wasn't just leader, he was the heart of the pack. And he said what mattered was that we were a pack, not that, or if, we slept with eachother, or with him. Even though, you know, we did. Or... do. I'd say it wasn't that we were all gay, it was that we were all in love with him. so being with eachother was kinda another way of being with him. I'd bet he encouraged it cause he suspected he had heart problems, and wanted us to have eachother when he... when we didn't have him, anymore."

"So how can I be part of that, if he's gone?" Paul snapped.

Dan proved unable to find an answer.

"I'm not afraid that I'll try it and like it." The hope that finally voicing the subject would make it disappear flickered and went out. "I'm not afraid of being able to do it. There was a part of me that was kinda hoping that tonight, in the tent, it would just..."

"...happen automatically?"

"...yeah. What scares me is having to decide. Cause then whatever happens'll be my responsibility. If I try it and don't like it, can't do it, what then? How can I leave? How can I do that to all of you?"

"Your dad used to be part of the pack, even before I was, and he left... oh, that's part of the problem, huh?"

Paul thought about the rare times, through a bedroom door left barely open, he'd overheard his father struggle through tears to talk to his mother about the packmates, the childhood friends, who he'd first turned with, he'd left behind. But he only nodded in reply.

"Well," Dan finally said, "we're not the only option. You've seen what so far, your folks? And heard about us? That's not a lot to base a decision on, pup. Werewolves live, hell, all sorts of ways. I bet you a bag of these freeze dried liver bites you just haven't seen the right one for you, yet."

Paul perked incredulous ears.

"They're the nacho cheese ones."

"Alright, alright," Paul let himself relax a little. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just... find wolves to talk to, all over the great pack. Whoever you feel like. I'll tell Miles tomorrow that you should have a chance to explore on your own, and I bet you by sunset you'll know!"

"Know what?" Miles said as he and Martin approached, trinketless.

"Know that I'm beat! We've been driving all day and it's past midnight!" Dan stretched a little too expressively, "C'mon, I got a sleeping bag waiting up for me."

Nobody, as far as Paul could tell, did anything in the tent that night but sleep.

"So how do you qualify for this event, exactly?" The morning found Paul doing his best to be subtle about how excited he was.

"First off, you have to be at least twenty one. Second, you have to have entered like a month ago." Dan said as he caught the clothes Martin tossed over his shoulder, "So you're out of luck for now." Apparently that hadn't been subtle enough.

The sun had only just risen. The closest thing to level ground had been kept clear and a long narrow strip had had ropes put up around it. At one end it went all the way to the forest and beyond the bounds of the Great Pack. At the other there was a horse trailer.

"I've seen these before," Miles explained, "Most packs aren't big enough, or got enough money to do this, but if you are and you want something to do at a birthday party or summer barbecue, you get a deer. You line everyone up, you give the deer a five second head start, and then you chase it."

That just made Paul all the more disappointed he hadn't had a chance to enter.

Martin headed for the starting line, already filing with other wolves. Some in athletic shorts, some in underwear, but most, like Martin, in nothing but fur.

"You've gotta both work together, like a hunting pack," Dan folded up Martin's clothes, "but also outrun everyone to be the one who grabs the flag."

"I thought it was a deer?" Paul asked.

"The flag's on the deer," Miles huffed. "Attached on a collar like something out of P.E. class."

"Here we go," Dan rolled his eyes. Whatever was about to happen, Dan was already tired of it.

"It's just silly, is all!" Miles grumbled. "The whole point of this is that it's like a hunt, and that's how they used to do it, as a hunt! It used to end with a big venison supper that everyone who chased it down shared! It was communal! This way, the only one who gets anything is the winner, and there shouldn't be a 'winner,' just the pack!"

"But," Dan retorted, "this way the deer doesn't get killed."

"That shouldn't matter," Miles rallied. "It's apparently fine for humans to kill animals when they go hunting!"

"But if there's any lycophobic shit-hearted crusade-fuckers looking for an excuse to call us monsters, they won't get one here."

"They'd just make one up!"

"Ssh, they're starting!"

A deer dashed by wearing a blue and yellow scarflike flag and a baffled, terrified expression, a crowd of wolves less than a second behind. They tore down the path toward the woods, where it became pretty impossible to see what was going on, but it wasn't long before a big brown wolf in jogging pants loped back, grinning and howling, flag clutched aloft in her fist. The deer vanished into the woods after what must have been a profoundly life-changing experience.

Martin trotted back to retrieve his clothes, looked a bit abashed. "Ah well. My old pack used to do these, didn't get a chance to try. So at least I did it, now!"

Paul handed them back and helped the defeated wolf get dressed. Dan and Miles, it seemed, were deep in conversation.

But the next event was tug of war--both hands and teeth allowed--and Paul got to participate in that one. The four of them formed an impromptu team with three other wolves, whose names Paul was too excited to remember to ask. They didn't take first place, but they won a cardboard flat of apple cider barbecue jerky strips, most of which went to the three teammates, since only a few bags could be carried back on the bikes.

"Uh, excuse me," a slim dark grey wolf approached the tent as they finished breakfast, head lowered, nose down. He had a green polo shirt tucked into the side of his belt, part of the word "STAF-" visible in yellow screen-printing. He wore a collar with a tag that read 'Guillermez, A.' "Are you Miles Gregory, of the Porcupine Mountains pack?"

"Uh, no?" Paul blinked, "Uncle Miles is over there, sir."

"Is there a problem?" Miles stalked over from the bin of dishwater--there was only so much you could do with paper plates--and it was uncanny how intimidating he could look when he wanted to.

"Oh, not like that, not at all," the staff wolf said quickly, "actually we hoped you could help us with some intruders. You, uh, have experience? And you were the first name anyone thought of, for... this."

Miles's brows creased, till he seemed to realize something. "Oh for fuck's sake..."

"We can handle it, if you don't-"

"No no, I'll come, better get it over with." Miles sighed and pulled on his jacket. "Just hate that this turned into the thing everybody knows me for."

Something nudged Paul in the back. "Go tag along," said Dan.

"What?"

"Well hang on," Miles objected. "I don't want him getting under-"

"He wants to know about what it's really like?" Dan answered, to Miles, "then he'd best start with bureau agents."

Which was how Paul found himself tailing Miles and the staffwolf over towards the east hills, where the thickets of cane and sagebrush huddled under the shelter of the mountains. "I don't understand what we're doing."

"There's been someone with binoculars up on the slopes," Gulliermez A. explained. "Since we arrived to set up. I really wanted to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, cause they've got to come to the pack one day, right? But three days isn't a hiker or birdwatcher."

"Which means?" Paul ventured.

"B. of E.P.M. agents, running surveillance on us." Miles halted behind an outcrop, nodded at a thicket of withered blackberry thorns. "In there?"

"Yeah."

"And you've got your phone on you?" Paul had never owned a mobile phone, but Guillermez A. had a staff smartphone.

"Ok," Miles pressed his own phone into Paul's paw. "I want both of you recording me the whole time, ok?" With that, the pack leader ducked around the bluff and made for the thicket at an easy walk, hands in his pockets.

Luckily it was far enough away that Guillermez A. had time to show Paul which button to press.

Miles reached the thicket without incident. He stood, arms akimbo, and waited a moment, then barked, "you're on camera, you're trespassing on private land, and your pretending I can't see you isn't doing much!"

Two people, a man and a woman, emerged from the bramble by standing up. It looked like they were wearing kevlar turtlenecks, and one had a camera with an enormous zoom lens.

They were too far for Paul to hear what they said, only Miles's response. "Like you were just now doing to all of us? Don't care. Bureau of Extra Human Bullshit policy isn't law, right to privacy is. This is a private gathering on private land, so you either show me a warrant or leave."

They had another response Paul couldn't catch.

"I'd've thought you'd consider, agent," Miles said, "that there's over a thousand werewolves in this valley, before you start making threats-"

There was a noise like a firecracker and a cork in a bottle at the same time.

Something hit Miles in the chest, knocked him over.

It bounced over his head and tumbled down the slope toward him and Guillermez A. Paul had just enough time to see a dull metal tube, the size of a toilet paper roll maybe, spewing clouds of white smoke, hear Miles' rapid, snarling, enraged howls, see the two humans struggling to get clear of the brambles, before he collapsed. His eyes were stinging and he was coughing so hard it felt like he was going to throw up.

Then he was being dragged clear. He couldn't smell anything but he was sure two of the hands on him were Miles.

"It was just a gas canister," Miles tried to wave away the medic, the only one here not shifted because she'd said claws weren't as dextrous as fingers, which Paul didn't believe. "I'm barely even bruised. The pup got a faceful of whatever it was, take care of him!"

Miles begrudgingly let her check for broken bones after Paul pointed out he'd already been taken care of.

They were sitting in a tent. Somebody had spray painted 'vet clinic' over the red cross on the army surplus canvas. Inside there was a general disorder of medical supplies, cobbled together from donations and consignments. They'd all gotten shots of antihistamine--just in case there'd been aconite in the gas--and the medic had rinsed his eyes with warm water and made him promise not to go anywhere till his sense of smell started to come back.

Four or five other wolves in STAFF shirts and ID-tagged collars had conferred, gravely though more than a little awestruck, with Miles and Alvaro, which it turned out had been what the 'A' in 'Guillermez A' stood for. As far as Paul could overhear, there had only been the two agents, and they'd cut and run under cover of tear gas. Someone, unsure who, had been told to call a lawyer, and Miles was supposed to talk to them when they called back. The words 'sue the holes right outta their asses' had been thrown around, with perhaps undue optimism.

But now they'd left him alone with Miles, the medic, and Alvaro. "Ok, I have to ask," might as well make a start on all the talking to different wolves he was supposed to do, "what are the collars about?

"Oh hell," grumbled Miles.

"Aren't you the Porcupine Mountains Pack?" the medic fingered her dogtags. "Do you not know the Gospel Howler? You're the ones who saved him!"

"Don't look at me," Miles replied to Paul's baffled glance, "nobody's gonna like it if I start saying what I think of any of this!"

"I'm... only recently with this pack," Paul said, which wasn't untrue, "and they haven't wanted to talk about whatever this is."

"Well, it's not entirely about this guy, but," said Alvaro, "a few years ago, there was a wolf who, well, started spreading the word. He said God had told him to call people to the Great Pack, and that one day when all humans in the world had turned, and were all together in the Great Pack, there'd be peace."

"And your Alpha saved him from the Bureau!" the medic insisted.

"I'm not an Alpha!" Miles objected.

"And, well, a lot of us liked that idea," Alvaro forged ahead doggedly, "I don't think I believe God had anything to do with it, but I've never seen wolves treat eachother as badly as humans treat eachother. It's an idea that deserves a try. We talked about trying, one idea led to another, and next thing you know we were organizing this thing!"

"All the staff wolves," the medic nodded sincerely.

"But what does that have to do with the collars?"

"Well, it's practical, you know?" Alvaro tugged at his. "It's a way to have your ID and name tag with you no matter if you've got pockets or clothes. No matter how far you need to shift. And it's a way for everyone to tell you're someone they can go to if they need to find a lost pup, or ask where the porta potties are or something. But also it means... we want wolves and humans to come together, right? To cooperate, live in peace with eachother?" There was a hard depth in his eyes, like he was watching the east horizon grow light even though sunrise was an hour away yet. "Well, human plus wolf? Adds up to dog."

"Listen," said Miles, after the medic was finally convinced they were alright, and had let them go, with a disappointed look for the big wolf, "I should get back and let Dan know we're all right before he worries his paw off. You still want to do this plan of yours?"

Paul set his jaw. "Yessir."

"Then would you," he turned to Alvaro, who jumped, "let Paul tag along with you till he runs into some other packs? He's supposed to be getting an idea of what's out there before he decides where he's gonna disperse."

And with a final "Be safe, Pup," Miles set him free to explore.

"I thought it was a curse, at first." Alvaro stopped short, when Paul asked him, stared up into the sky.

Paul had followed the staffwolf towards the opposite cluster of campgrounds from his own. Alvaro was honestly surprised he wasn't entirely Miles's packmate. If a wolf had a chance to join a pack with a reputation like Miles's, he'd asked, why not jump at it?

Paul hadn't known that the pack had a reputation. He'd just thought they were his uncles.

To change the subject, he'd asked Alvaro how he'd turned.

"I was bitten," he said, and didn't elaborate. "My first shifts were very rough. Very painful. I dreaded the full moon, panicked every second I spent as the wolf. Which, in hindsight, maybe what was happening to... whoever bit me. I never got a chance to ask."

"If you don't want to talk about it, mister-" Paul began.

"No, it's fine. It ought to be known." Alvaro paused to ask a wolf child where her parents were, got told they were 'at the booth,' which she didn't know where that was, nor did she see why that was a problem, but luckily was easy to find by smell and not far, so they were able to reunite her with her mother. "My family tried to cure me. We all thought it was a curse, you see, cause that's the only way anyone ever talked about it. They called in the B. of E.P.M. The caseworker spent days trying to explain there was no such thing as a cure. When they wouldn't listen, they turned to... other methods. Folk remedies. Crackpot therapy. Did the whole thing with the cage in the basement. I'm lucky homeopathy doesn't work, cause they tried that with wolfsbane. They even tried exorcism."

"I'm alright," Alvaro continued, before Paul could ask, "I'm good now. Caseworker got me out of there when I mentioned some of the cures they were trying, like I thought they were normal. Rare good guy moment for the Bureau, I know. Now... I have a mate. On trash duty today. The work we're doing with the Great Pack, it's important. Plenty of other wolves--you for one, it sounds like--got here without going through that kind of hurt, and I hope what I do makes that more likely. Makes fewer people think it's a curse."

"You don't ever wonder," Paul scuffed at the gravel with his paw, "if it could have been different?"

"I wonder, sure. In a perfect world, maybe whoever bit me, wouldn't've been bitten themselves." Alvaro waved to another wolf in a 'STAFF' shirt and collar. "But what's the point in asking those questions? I'm the wolf I am cause of what I went through. The wolves, or the humans, I'd be if it'd gone different, they don't exist. Even if I asked those questions--what makes us turn into wolves, why does sex or a bite do it but a blood transfusion doesn't, why the full moon--I wouldn't trust answers from a human. Or hell, from a wolf, cause who knows how much of that answer they learned from humans. That's why the Great Pack matters: the day we're all wolves together'll be the day it's finally safe to ask, I guess."

Paul felt the rising impulse to ask how he could help next year. But no. More to see, first.

"I guess the questions don't matter," they'd crossed the whole main grounds and stood among campsites and stunted trees. "My mate, they like me just fine like this, and that's what matters. Anyway, kid, good luck with what you're looking for. And... if you ever want to hear some more about the Great Pack?"

Paul promised he'd get in touch, should that day ever come.

It was one thing for Dan to tell him to talk to other wolves, but doing it was a different proposition.

All of them--parents with pups, grizzled old loners, exuberant adolescents chasing eachother through the crowd, the seven-foot beast wearing nothing at all and carrying what looked like an entire truckload of firewood under one arm--were so intent on their own business that none of them noticed Paul trying to speak before they were out of sight.

"Are you lost, pup?" said a voice behind him.

"Uh, no, sorry ma'am," when he turned, Paul found himself facing an older woman in a brown leather jacket, beat up jeans, and bare feet, expression like the halfway point between a librarian and a gunslinger. "I'm... supposed to be asking different people what being a werewolf means to them," and hearing himself say it like that made it sound like a project for the school paper.

"Well, I dunno, kid," she raised her eyebrows, "I'm not a werewolf."

A split second after Paul tilted his head in bafflement he realized this was exactly the reaction she'd expected.

"Here," just to underline the point she shifted to sandy grey fur and handed him a reusable cloth bag full of souvenirs, "how bout carry this stuff back to camp for me and I'll explain."

Camp proved to be by a dry creek bed up in the foothills, with another older wolf, dun pelt, sunning herself on a smooth face of granite from which she propped herself up on an elbow to ask "Well, what's goin on here?"

"Kid's doin some kinda project for the school paper, or something." The wolf he'd come here with plucked the bag from Paul's paws. "I told him he could ask questions and we'd tell him what's what."

The sandy wolf looked at Paul like she was expecting to be told this was a prank.

"Uh, mostly I'm confused about what it meant when you said you weren't a werewolf?" he tried not to sound sulky, at least.

"Do you know where the word 'werewolf' comes from, son?" the dun wolf sighed as the sandy one helped her to her feet. "It's from Old English," she continued when Paul shook his head. "Back then, the word for man was 'wer' and the word for a woman was 'wyf.' They used the word 'man' to just mean "a person," but that started to become gendered as the language' turned into Middle English-"

"Yeah, to skip the dissertation," the sandy wolf said, "the word 'werewolf' comes from that. Literally means 'Man-Wolf'."

"Yes, so we're Wifwolves," finished the dun one, with a hint of growl.

"Oh, is that..." Paul wracked his brains, "I... can't remember mom ever saying that? But is that what I should call, uh... ladies? Now that I'm trying to disperse."

"Ideally!" the sandy wolf set the bag in the back of a sensible-looking station wagon, where all the necessities had been neatly laid out.

"Well, no..." the dun wolf rolled her eyes, leaned toward Paul in a way that made her look like a schoolteacher. "If you go around calling people something they don't themselves identify as, even with the best intentions, even if in a perfect world they would, then at best that's gonna be real awkward. It's not your business, hun, if other... female wolves aren't using the term that some of us," the face she turned toward the smugly smiling sandy wolf was equal parts affection and aggravation, "think they ought to. It's for each of us to decide what others should call us."

"But it won't be the end of the world," the sandy wolf had taken the sunning spot on the warm granite, but left space for her companion to join her, "if 'Wifwolf's' the word you put down in your school report."

And it was easier, at this point, not to correct the misunderstanding, so Paul thanked them for the answers and moved on.

"It's been three days since you last had a chance, babe. And if any place is safe, it's gotta be here." A large wolf, shifted, jeans and an old fashioned jacket, was leaning over the side of a convertible, apparently trying to persuade a smaller wolf, unshifted, under a baggy flannel shirt.

The smaller one sighed, the way you do when you've had this argument before and didn't win that time either. He hunched down, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled at something underneath.

Then he was shifting, hunched down even further. When he came up, he was just as large as his companion, if not a little larger. He handed over something that Paul thought to be an undershirt. The first wolf slapped it atop a pile of clothes in a basket, grabbed a tiny bottle of laundry detergent out of an open backpack. He gave the wolf in flannel, hastily buttoned again though now significantly less baggy, a swift lick on the side of the muzzle and headed for the stream.

Paul jumped when the flannel wolf made eye contact, snapped at him, "What's the matter with you, kid, never seen a guy take off his binder before?!"

"I, uh, his what?" Paul floundered, "Uh, nossir, I don't believe I have... What's a binder?" He tilted his head and took wild guess from context. "Is that, like, a thing that makes it easier to not shift?"

"Have you seriously," grumbled the wolf, "never met a trans person before? Even just a human?"

"I'll be honest, mister," Paul raised his shoulders and lowered his ears, "Before this trip it was pretty rare I met anybody but Mom or Dad."

The flannel-clad wolf looked a lot less angry and a lot more like he'd just realized there was a mess that needed to be cleaned up and nobody else to do it. "Ok..." he breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. "Please tell me you've heard of a trans person before?"

"Is that where," Paul ventured cautiously, "you're born a girl but grow up to be a man?"

"...you know what, close enough to start with." The wolf leaned back against the side of the car, in a pose very similar to that his boyfriend had used. "Ok, first, you're not born one thing and grow up another. You always were what you are, it was just a lot harder to see."

"So it's when you're born looking like a girl but were secretly a boy?"

"Second," he growled over Paul's apparently incomplete understanding, "It's not as tidy as that. People don't fit neatly into the binary of 'masculine' and 'feminine.'"

"Do you mean you don't turn all the way male when you shift?"

The expression with which that question was met led Paul to suspect it hadn't fit neatly into the binary of 'polite' and 'not polite.'

"I mean," he sighed, "it's not about 'turning all the way,' it's about finding ways to make your body, the way you feel like you exist, and the way people see you, match the real you. That's what the binder is for, to flatten the chest out, get it?"

"I think I see..." Paul said, still cautious, "So do you not need it as the wolf? Cause I always felt like I wasn't my real self when I had to be human."

"Well, I need it less, but it's mostly that I just get so damn much bigger as a wolf, it just doesn't fit any more." He rolled his eyes. "Look, kid, I'm not mad at you, really. I have to deal with these questions a lot, but like, I jumped to a lot of conclusions like that too, back in the day. When you're just human, to fully transition can cost a lot of money, lot of time. Medicines and surgeries and everything. Lot of us can't afford it. When I found out lycanthropy was an option, I... jumped the gun. Assumed it'd be a one hit knock-out for dysphoria and I'd shift into something that looked like furry po-, uh, a furry beefcake pinup."

"I know what porn is..." Paul mumbled with some indignation.

"The reality is it isn't perfect. I've met wolves who make it look perfect," he was no longer looking at Paul, "who get to look exactly how they always wanted to look when they shift. And I've gotten there once or twice, I think. But then, I'd bet those who look perfect to me don't feel perfect all the time, either, and I bet it takes just as much work."

He brought his attention back to Paul. "I don't mean to make it sound so hard. Some days are great. Some days I feel like it's better than others. Some days I don't and I think it's just that wolves've got a lot less sexual dimorphism."

Paul tilted his head again.

"Uh, male wolves bodies and female wolves bodies are a lot less physically different than male humans and female humans, is what that means." He shrugged. "Now I dunno if I buy that the wolf is my real self and the human's a mask, like you hear some wolves talk about. Shifting does make presenting right easier and more comfortable, and that's not nothing. But-" he jabbed a paw at Paul, "you can't stay shifted all the time!"

"Oh, yeah," Paul nodded eagerly, glad to finally have hit a point he could relate to.

"So, for when I can't shift," the wolf spread his arms like a conductor ending the symphony, "I got a binder."

Paul frowned in thought. "For what it's worth, sir? It didn't occur to me there was any difference till you explained about, uh, everything. I grew up around werewolves, not humans. So first difference I noticed between Mom and Dad was, like, smell? And you smell pretty much the same as any other male wolf."

The other wolf blinked at him.

"Uh, hope that helps, nice meeting you, thank you for explaining!" Paul hurried away before he could die of embarrassment.

"That's a heavy question, kid," the shaggy old wolf had leaned back in his lawnchair and taken a bite of bratwurst, which apparently helped him think. "But I guess most've us've probably thought about it a while. You tend to ruminate over a thing, if that thing means you ain't exactly human anymore, you know?"

"So... if I hadn't been born a wolf," Paul struggled to ignore the smell of the other bratwurst waiting on skewers over the campfire, "I wouldn't need to ask?"

"Huh." A further contemplative chomp of sausage and bun was reinforced by a gulp of beer. "I dunno, kid."

The old wolf was wearing overalls, with the straps undone, and a button-up shirt--sun-bleached from blue to grey--tied by its sleeves around his waist like a breechcloth. He had a new-looking cap that said 'Teamsters Extrahuman Chapter' pulled low over his eyes. He had a collar and dogtags--the same kind Alvaro had--that said 'C. Whitman,' not worn, but hanging from his belt.

"I guess the start is when," Whitman explained, "I was driving a route through New Mexico. Bitch of a schedule, only got budgeted three hours a night to eat and sleep, and they expected you to speed to make up fer any bathroom breaks. So when I picked up a hitchhiker and he started talking nonsense, I got to thinking I was the one who'd gone crazy, not him. And thing is, kid, when a man thinks he's crazy, then he's suddenly a lot more willin to do crazy things. Which is how the Gospel Howler talked me into findin a werewolf and askin him to bite me."

"The... Gospel Howler is..." Paul narrowed his eyes, "some kind of werewolf preacher? I heard a couple wolves mention him."

"Lotta the resta the staff are pretty big fans of his."

"Uncle Miles--well, not really uncle, that's just what I used to call him as a kid--but his pack met him." Paul frowned. "He didn't want to talk about it. I don't think he was impressed."

"Lotta wolves ain't." Whitman said. "To tell the truth, he weren't impressive. Scruffy, spacey, more'n a little out there. But none of that's the same as wrong." He turned the sausages over the greying coals, judged them done enough, and slid them each into a bun. He passed one to Paul, who had been so busy trying to pretend he wasn't hoping to get one that he was genuinely surprised when he did. "But for me... I can't argue with the results. Company dropped me when cops arrested me for gettin turned, a'course, but I still had my truck and license. And it's a lot easier to afford going independent when you got night vision, or can sleep under the stars just fine. Now I haul cargo fer wolves, or folks wolves know at least. It took a lot more cargo haulin than you'd think to get this place set up, I tell you what!"

"Do you," Paul worried this would be a rude question but it was long past the time to worry about those, "not have a pack?"

"Well, yes and no." Whitman shrugged. "I aint the only wolf I know what spends all his time on the road. We stay in touch, look out fer eachother, get a meal together when we run into one another. Maybe that counts. But if you mean the kind where everyone lives together and everyone's always chasing eachother in an out of everyone else's bed, no."

His anxieties about the pack he'd arrived with blazed up in Paul's mind. He said nothing.

"Maybe someday, though. I'll admit I've shared a motel room with a few wolves I know on the road. Wouldn't a never considered a fella, before, assumed I was... straight, I think it's called? But on this side I don't seem to care what the wolf I'm holdin is, just who they are. I dunno, maybe that's something I picked up with the wolf, maybe that was always in me and the wolf woke it up, or maybe I just used to be too afeared. So... maybe I'll change my mind and settle down. Already changed a powerful lot about m'self, long after I thought I was too old."

Paul finished his bratwurst, said he understood and even meant it, a little. The trucker startled, as if he'd forgotten the younger wolf was there.

"So you grew up as a wolf? You were just always like this?" Whitman blinked at him. "Must've been nice, never havin to second guess who you are."

Paul wasn't sure about that.

Would someone who wasn't second guessing who he was have to ask so many wolves so many questions?

"The thing is," explained the wolf behind a food truck named Eyes As Big As Plates, "the binary between 'human' and 'wolf' is a social construct."

They were dressed in a baggy black shirt under a red apron faded with the remnants of uncountable stains lost to innumerable laundromats. They'd taken advantage of one of the folding picnic tables to set up a cutting board and were busily converting a pile of potatoes, apples, and beets into small, even, cubes. Judging by the traces still to be smelled from the truck, these were destined for pierogies, or maybe some kind of fried hand-pie.

"I thought the social construct binary," Paul had, in fact, been paying attention, "was between 'masculine' and 'feminine'?"

"Well yeah, that's one too. Maybe it doesn't work exactly the same way, but..." they raised their hands as if to brace themselves against invisible walls, lest they gather too much momentum and charge unstoppably into some other tangential explanation. "Look at it like this. How far can you shift?"

"Pretty far. I once won a medal cause they couldn't tell I wasn't actually a sheepdog."

"Ok, but when you did that, you still weren't completely a wolf. You still had human thoughts in there, right?"

Paul acknowledged that yeah, he couldn't have gotten away with it without those.

"And in the other direction, you're never completely human. You always have your sense of smell, your instincts, right?"

Paul couldn't deny it.

"So you're never fully the one or the other. Sometimes you're more one, sometimes more the other." They chopped a carrot emphatically. "You shift between them. Why else would they call us shapeshifters?"

"Who calls us shapeshifters?"

"Humans, you know."

"They call us shapeshifters?"

"The point is! ...a lot of us will talk about the wolf being your 'true self,'" they stopped short when they saw how Paul's ears had perked and tail wagged at that, took a moment to hastily rephrase, "and... for those of us it works for... that's great! There's nothing wrong with that! But like, I can't help but wonder. If you've got a human side and a wolf side, you can't help but always be some of both, and you live in a society that says that only the human side's acceptable, then the rare times you get to let the wolf side out are gonna be a relief, are gonna feel like you can stop being fake and be real."

"So I don't know," they swept the last of the cubed potatoes into a bowl, slipped the paring knife and peeler into an apron pocket, "how comfortable I am with this whole One Big Pack thing. You don't stop being the real you when you look like a human. At least I don't. If they think everyone living as just a wolf's gonna solve all problems ever, well... they can try it, but I'm not holding my breath."

They disappeared, with their bowl and cutting board, back into the truck.

But when Paul later passed someone--fluffy copper-colored fur, long tuft of tail, slender snout--he would've sworn was a werefox, perhaps some kind of weredog, neither human nor wolf but here nonetheless, he also couldn't help but wonder.

"So the problem joining the pack you came with," the wolf with the nearly-white fur was intently focused on tuning the fiddle on her shoulder, but she'd been answering Paul's questions attentively all the while, "is they're one big polycule, and you don't see a place for you in that?"

Paul needed the word 'polycule' explained--why not just say 'pack?'--but that sounded like a fair assessment.

The nearly-white wolf seemed to find that quietly humorous. "Well, if you don't mind hearing it, I'm in a pack like that. Every one of them's sleeping with every other one." She nodded to the pack members as they came back with purchases from the booths or emerged from the RV.

"Jake and Marc sit with the guys, Gwen and Amy sit with the girls, and then Dee tends to sit with the ladies as a human and with the lads as a wolf. They're all together in one combination or another, I gave up trying to keep track long ago."

Wait, though, "you said every one of...THEM?" asked Paul.

"Indeed I did, kid, well caught," she gestured with the bow, checked the highest string again. "I don't sleep with any of em. With anybody, for that matter, haven't for years. Just don't feel the need for it. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't dislike it. I just don't care to do it. Everyone else is a player, and I love the game, but you couldn't get me on the field if you tried."

"I don't think I understand..." Paul said, because he didn't.

"The point, relative to your present predicament you see, is that I don't need to throw my hat into the ring, so to speak, to be part of the pack. I cuddle when there's cuddling to be had, and other than that I'm just happy that they're happy. Means my pack's on a solid foundation."

Said pack was settling around them. "Anyway," she set bow to strings, "singing with folks's a closer bond than anything you can do in bed."

"We gotta rehearse a bit, there," said one of them, likely Jake, Marc, or Dee.

"You'd be welcome to join in, if you want, man!" added another, likely Gwen or Amy, though perhaps Dee couldn't be ruled out.

The song was deceptively simple, but the lyrics were vague in a way that felt like they expected you to already know this story. Verses about nonspecific heartbreak, young lovers separated by poverty, a long train journey that seemed to be at least three fourths metaphor, except for the parts where the whistle made "me,"--whichever one of the people in the song 'me' was--want to howl.

All the nearly-white wolf's pack clearly knew it by heart. Some of them were even slipping into harmony just by force of habit. A wordless reiteration of the invitation flashed across the split second eye contact between Paul and the violinist, and possibly it was an invitation to more than just the song. He would have been lying if he said he didn't feel the pull of it: the chorus around him hummed with the certainty that of the two kinds of intimacy this pack shared, the music was the closer, the more ecstatic.

They moved into a second song without breaking stride, and now every wolf's eyes were on him, alert and puppyish, playfull, daring him to join them. The verses on this one were obscure:

_Then a wolfish transformation through humanity shall run, _

_And a transubstantiation that shall never be undone, _

_Sets the wolf within me howling, to the hymn the pack's begun. _

_An everlasting song! _

but the tune was familiar and words to the chorus were so easy that he'd already memorized them without trying. Mostly "Halleluia forever" over and over. He might not yet know their harmonies--or the way some of them were howling, rather than singing, the 'halleluias'--but it would be the easiest thing in the world to step into the place in the music they were leaving for him.

Something made him hold back. It felt like the idea of joining Miles and Dan and Martin, in the tent, like not knowing if he would have it in him, if he could be who they expected him to be, if he could walk through the door, held open in invitation.

So he waited through a few more songs, said he'd be sure to come listen when the bandstand was theirs tomorrow afternoon, and turned to go. Half sure that if he'd had more courage he could have stayed, and more than half terrified this had been his chance at the place he was supposed to belong, which he'd just missed.

The other half of him was beginning to get very tired.

"You look lost, pup."

Paul looked up. He'd wandered away from the tents and the booths, up into the foothills, to think. From here he could have looked over the entirety of the Great Pack, as the evening settled, the campfires were lighted, and the strings of lights flickered on. But his head was too full, he couldn't fit any more vistas of lycanthropic solidarity, no matter how much the wolf he'd been three days ago in Nebraska would have given to see them.

The wolf beside him wore dusty clothes, suspenders, and fur so dark black that it almost looked some shade of purple, especially in the crimson light of sunset. Well, if he thought Paul looked lost, there wasn't much disagreeing with him, was there? "I guess I feel lost, sir."

"You need a hand getting back to the pack you came with?" the dark wolf asked.

"Oh, nossir. Not that kinda lost," Paul shook his head. "I... came here with high hopes. I wanted to find out what it was like to be a real werewolf, to have a place in a pack for real, a place I don't have to negotiate or defend, that nobody questions, the whole pack just takes it for granted that I belong there. But everything I learned... everyone I talked to... it's so much more complicated than I ever woulda guessed, you know?"

"You realize that's not usually something you care about when you're joining a pack, right?" the other wolf asked.

"I've heard that one, yeah" Paul sighed.

"I dunno about the kinda place you mean," the dark wolf huffed, "but if you wanna talk about it somewhere more comfortable?"

He'd followed the dark wolf most of the way before Paul realized they were heading for that cabin he and Martin had seen when they first arrived.

"Wait, are you..." Paul couldn't remember how to ask the question he wanted. "Is this all... you? Are you...?"

"That's my house, if that's what you mean. And I've been planning to bring this whole thing together for a long time."

The cabin porch was equipped with a small rusty barbecue and a surprisingly comfortable bench swing. The dark wolf set an enamel camp kettle over the slumbering coals, and kept Paul silent company until it was time to pour hot water into a pair of mugs.

Paul sniffed his experimentally. Some kind of tea, he thought.

"So," the dark wolf lapped at his own steaming mug, "you don't know if you've got a place?"

Paul nodded. "Every wolf I talked to has one, but all cause of, like, answers to questions I never even thought to ask. I dunno where'd I'd even start looking for mine."

"In my experience," the sunset, for a moment, was just at the right angle to turn the steaming plumes from the dark wolf's mug a vivid and luminous crimson, "it's not that the pack had a place ready for all these wolves. It's that all these wolves ARE the pack, and they make places for eachother. Be who you are first, and when the pack can see what space to make for you, it will. Without even realizing they've done it. Maybe the question you should be asking is 'who do you want to be?'"

"I'm afraid all I got is 'part of a pack.'"

"Alright, start there," the midnight-colored wolf scratched the bridge of his nose, "make the question, 'what kinda pack would you wanna be part of?' Does saying it like that work?"

"I guess," Paul sounded uncertain, even to himself, "it'd be cool to be one of those drifter lone wolves. Never stop traveling. Hunt to eat, sleep under the stars. Pass as a stray dog when I need to. I bet that sounds a lot more fun than it is, but it sounds fun enough that I'd want it anyway. Maybe have a different mate in different packs I travel between, though that doesn't seem fair to them."

"Well, that'd be for them to decide, wouldn't it?" the dark wolf commented. "If they think you're bein fair enough to em, seems rude to disagree."

"Would they? Think it was fair?"

"How would I know? Have to ask them. Once you find em."

"Maybe I'd have one pack," Paul wasn't sure if that was reassuring but he might as well carry on with the fantasy, "that's 'home' even if I don't see it often, like the pack I came with." The tea was surprisingly sweet, "But they're all gay."

"And you're not?"

"Man, I don't even know!" the young wolf whimpered. "I've imagined things, but trying to just... imagine a lady, or imagine a man, or I guess I should say wifwolf or werewolf, that doesn't... I don't..." he took another drink of tea. "What I keep really imagining is that whoever it is, whatever they are, afterward they tell me something like: c'mon, we're together now, you're one of us."

"So what you really lust after," the dark wolf leaned on his porch railing, setting sun at his back, "is belonging. You can't tell what place you want because all you really want is having a place."

Paul nodded, slowly, mildly envious that he hadn't been able to put it into words like that.

"I think you've got the scent of it," the dark wolf continued. "You just don't know if you can do what it takes to run it down."

Paul growled miserably. "How the hell do guys like Miles and Dan just know, from the start?"

"Well," the dark wolf collected Paul's empty mug, set both aside, "I'd wager if you asked them, they'd say they didn't 'just know.' They had to figure it out, too. Everybody does, to one degree'r another. Now, it sounds you've been having yourself an exercise in empathy, and far be it from me to speak against empathy. But empathy ain't gonna tell you who you are, just who everyone else is. Only thing'll do that is your own life."

That sounded like it had been meant to be significant. Paul looked up. The other wolf was standing by the doorway, holding it open. The sunset blazed behind him, and made his silhouette look like his shape had been cut out of the midnight sky. Except, by some kind of chance reflection, his eyes shone, almost the same color as the setting sun.

Paul stepped closer, hesitantly. "You mean I could-?"

"If you want to. Up to you."

He followed the other wolf within. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but before they did he felt the other wolf touch him on the cheek, pull him gently deeper into the room that existed only as smells: boots by the door, coat hung on the rack, old and comfortable furniture, and years and years of wolf, but underneath was incense and woodsmoke and something warm and comforting on the stove, and still deeper underneath rain and trees and moss and infinite spaces to roam forever.

His lips found his host's mouth, brushed gently. Just the smallest taste.

"I can't promise," the other wolf whispered, his whiskers touched Paul's forehead in a way that somehow didn't tickle, "that this'll give you any answers. I hope it'll show you how to do what you feel you need. But I do promise that, as far as I'm concerned, you're one of us."

The cabin door swung gently closed, and for a little while the Great Pack was only the two of them.

"Oh, there you are, Pup!" Dan said when Paul returned to their campfire. "Guess what? Remember we were talking about if we ought to say hello to the wolf who let them have this whole thing here?"

"Hey there, sonny!" An old, shaggy wolf, coyote-drab fur, in camo shorts, a faded neckerchief, and hefty cowboy boots, sat on the other side between Miles and Martin. "Good t'meetcha! Hope ya been enjoyin the Great Pack!"

Paul blinked. "This is your land?"

"Well no," the wolf's coat was matted and his jowls sagged, but his tail wagged busily, "this here's either Cheyenne or Eastern Shoshone land. But the gubmint thinks it's mine, and that's enough to get done what needs doin, I reckon!"

"Uh, where," Paul glanced back, eyes scanned the line of hills against the turquoise-lit post-sunset sky, "do you live, sir?"

"Respectful pup, aintcha?" the old wolf chuckled. "I got me the trailer, she does me well enough! Winter comes, I drive her down inta Fort Collins, stay there till spring and I head back up here."

The foothills above them, Paul confirmed, were empty. Of the cabin he'd seen on arrival, where he'd been initiated by the dark wolf's embrace, there was no sign.

The old wolf didn't stay long. "Got a lotta folk's smells t'get to know! Yall take care now!" he said, and headed for the next campsite. Then it was just them. Stars above, fire below, Great Pack all around.

"You ok, Pup?" Miles asked. "You were gone for a while."

"Yeah, just asking some questions," Paul squared his shoulders, took a breath like a diver before the plunge. "Working out some answers."

Before he had time to think, he turned and kissed Dan, not hard, but very firmly.

Once the startled (Miles,) and wildly enthusiastic (Martin) reactions, not to mention both (Dan,) were out of the way, Dan asked "Does that mean you're coming back with us, to join our pack?"

"Yes and no," Paul hesitated, but the memory of a kiss in a cabin that was no longer there encouraged him. "I'll come with you, hell, I think I was always going to. No idea where else I'd go. But I'm gonna be away a lot. Traveling on my own. Maybe have regular stops, packs that'll recognize me if I turn up out of the blue."

"I need to... tell people. Wolves, wherever I can find them. Maybe even humans, if they're willing to be turned. Cause I know which pack has a place for me, and it isn't yours." The young wolf waved a hand, absently, in a way that took in the valley, the campsites, the booths, the food trucks, the flags, the bandstand, the strings of lights, the forest beyond, the last remnants of sunset above, and every variety of wolf to be found beneath it. "It's this one."

"Well, Pup," said Dan, as Martin took his turn embracing Paul, "when I told you there was a place in the pack for you, I didn't expect one like that."

"Yeah... guess you gotta be careful looking for what you really want. Didn't expect to find it. But," Paul's tail wouldn't stop wagging, "I owe you a bag of nacho cheese liver bites."

And if the coming days would see to it he followed these wolves home, found a welcome in their arms and beds, rode the hand-me-down motorcycle--that had once bourne Miles from funeral procession to leadership--on his own journeys, pack to pack, mate to mate, bearing a collar with tags in his own name in defiance of those whose tales perhaps conflated him with a predecessor, transubstantiated his life and love into the thread with which to sew packs together into a single Great Pack...

...well, that would be the coming days' business. Tonight, Paul couldn't care less what the coming days intended.

Tonight, he had found his place, with his pack.

Tonight he was home.