Her heart had hardened. Her life revolved around the ring, being transported to and from it, being chained in the yard, always waiting for that one single opportunity to tear out the throat of the Man. Time and again she vowed that this night she wouldn’t fight. She’d let her opponent kill her and be done with the prison of her life. But in the ring, all the anger she felt toward the Man arose, and she took out her rage on whatever hapless dog had been thrown into the dirt ring with her.

And then she met Joe.

She could still remember how he’d treated her as an equal, right from the first, when she was still chained in the Man’s yard. He carried a strange, unrecognizable scent—man, yes, but also that of dog and bird. Not that he’d been in contact with either, but that they lived under his skin with the man. His presence made her whiskers twitch and woke a tickle in that part of her mind that housed her spirit voice.

When he approached her he was cautious, but fearless. She’d heard the words spilling from his lips, but she also heard his spirit voice in her head. She’d never met any man or beast with that voice before. Voices had come to her before, but they were always distant, beyond the confines of where she was chained, or in passing, when she was in a cage in the back of the Man’s pickup on the way to or from a fight.

But here was a man with that voice. A man offering friendship with no bargain attached. Who’d freed her and the rest of the pack without the fear that they would then turn on him.

It was only later that she understood why. When she saw he could wear more than one shape. Dog, man, blackbird. He offered friendship and freedom because he was one of them. From another pack, but he was still kin. Or at least kin to her with the voice in her head.

That voice.

When he came to her a couple of years ago and asked her to help find a friend, she’d done so willingly. He’d come as he had when he set the pack free and showed them how to step into the otherworlds: Fearless. Without guile. Expecting nothing. As a friend. The way, she realized, that he’d go to another to ask help for her if she were in trouble and he couldn’t help her on his own.

She felt like part of two packs then. The one she led. And the one . . . his . . . in which she . . . this was hard. The one in which she neither led nor followed, but in which she was an equal. The feeling was alien and uncomfortable, but not altogether unpleasant.