I closed my eyes and, after a fairly tough and lengthy struggle, calmed down enough to find the light meditative state Adam had taught me to help me negotiate the pack bonds—as well as the mate bond between him and me.

Eventually, I stood on the battered stage of my old high school—the one in Portland. The floor was lit by a single spotlight, the one just over the control booth that sat in the middle of the balcony seats. I knew it was there, but, caught in the spotlight’s glare, I couldn’t see it.

The boards under my feet had been polished at one time, but years of student productions, of rolling the risers and the piano in and out, had left the old floor scarred and rough under my bare feet. Though I was wearing my coyote shape in real life, here in my mind, I was looking for human things, so I was in my human shape, naked, because naked made me feel vulnerable, and I couldn’t seem to find the safe space I needed to allow me to go clothed.

Darkness gathered at the edges of the stage and covered the auditorium in shadows that my eyes couldn’t penetrate. But I wasn’t here to explore my memory of high school.

I looked down at myself and patted the tattoo on my belly for a minute. There was nothing magical about the tattoo. It was just a paw print—a coyote paw print no matter what Adam said. But it centered me—it was at the center of me, a symbol of the coyote within. My fingers came down for the hundredth or two hundredth time—and hit a thick rope that wrapped all the way around me.

It was a rope that should have been too big to tie around me, but, as my perceptions of it changed, clarified, I could see that it wove around my upper torso like a bulletproof vest, if bulletproof vests were made of silk rope. I could not feel its weight, but here in that place between waking and sleep, it was warm and comforting—and it stretched into a gray mist that had somehow gathered in the darkness surrounding me.

I bent my head and pulled the rope to my nose. It smelled like Adam, and I touched it to my cheek. Under my hand, it felt alive and well—I could, faintly, feel Adam’s resolve, his stress and his fear. Gently, I let the rope fall away from my hands. I was not looking for my mate bond.

The pack bonds were woven through my vest, the warp to Adam’s weave; fluffier than the silk that was my bond with Adam, my pack bonds came in the shape of colorful Christmas garlands. Far lighter than the bond between Adam and me, they sparkled and shimmered as I moved. They stretched out from me in a braided cable about half as big as the mate bond. Like that bond, the pack bonds disappeared in the mist of distance. When I touched them, I could feel, very faintly, the lives of the wolves on the other end.