Spirit of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst Read Free Book Online

“I mean yes. We don’t have a territory.”
    â€œAre you trying to find one here, or do you plan to keep journeying?”
    â€œWho’s your secondwolf?” the male standing next to her—the one she’d called Sallin—asked abruptly.
    My secondwolf? I thought. The Sentinel wolves all looked at me. They thought I was a leaderwolf and that the others followed me. Sallin’s eyes flicked from Marra to Pell and back to me again. If they knew we weren’t a real pack, that I wasn’t a leaderwolf, they might challenge us to a fight. They weren’t as large as Stone Peaks and didn’t look any stronger than we were, but we couldn’t risk any injuries. And we couldn’t let them past us to find our humans.
    â€œWe’re still working that out,” I answered.
    â€œYou’re a new pack, then,” Lallna said, as if that explained a great deal to her. She leaned close to me. “I would choose the willow-smelling male,” she said, “even though he’s lame. Idon’t think you should have a female second. If you have a male second, he can also be your mate.” She looked Pell over once more and smirked.
    â€œSo why did you fight a human?” Sallin asked. The wound on his head was bleeding, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
    The more I talked to the Sentinel wolves, the more determined I was to keep them from knowing about our humans.
    Lallna, Sallin, and their packmates stared at me, waiting for me to say more. Marra came to my rescue.
    â€œYou’re called the Sentinel pack?” she asked. Her tone was polite but any wolf who knew her would know she was holding back laughter at their pack name. I glared at her and she lowered her eyes. Not in submission to me, but to keep from laughing.
    â€œYes,” Lallna said. “Sentinel holds all the lands from the spruce grove to beyond the Hill Rock.”
    I held back a grunt of disbelief. I’d never heard of any one pack holding that much land.
    â€œHow many wolves are in Sentinel?” Ázzuen asked. The fur between his eyes wrinkled as it did when he was thinking hard. It hadn’t occurred to me that the pack might be larger than the five wolves before us.
    â€œI can’t tell you that,” Lallna growled.
    Ãzzuen took a step forward. “What are you sentinels of?” he persisted, his nose twitching as if he was on the scent of prey.
    Lallna lifted her lip at him. “You’ll find out soon enough. We’re supposed to bring any wolves that come through the Wide Valley to our gathering place. You can go on your way if our leaderwolves say so.”
    My backfur rose. We couldn’t abandon our humans. Even if the Sentinels’ leaderwolves let us go on our way, I wouldn’t leave TaLi and MikLan protected only by ravens. I looked at Marra. She was the best of us at pack dynamics, and I hoped she would find a way to talk the Sentinel youngwolves into letting us go. But it was Pell who answered, at his most arrogant.
    â€œWhy would we go with you?” Pell looked down his muzzle at Lallna. “We’re not part of your pack and we’ll pass through your lands as we choose. We won’t be ordered about by a bunch of curl-tails.”
    A curl-tail was the lowest ranking wolf in the pack and the last to feed. It was an insult, and the Sentinel youngwolves responded to it. Before I could even snarl at Pell, Lallna launched herself at me.
    By the time I tensed my muscles to react, she was on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other four Sentinel wolves leaping at my packmates. Sallin and a tawny-furred male dove for Pell, who grinned as he crouched to respond. The two remaining wolves attacked Ázzuen and Marra. My heart pounded so hard I was certain Lallna could hear my fear. Some wolves enjoyed fighting. I did not. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.
    Lallna hit me hard, trying to knock me over with the force of