Argus stood tall, clenching his fists. “Do you want to fight me over this?”

Noble thought about it. What on earth had made Argus want to ignore the ranger’s orders, and now want to fight a brother over it?

“Of course not,” said Noble. He stared into his brother’s eyes. “What’s gotten into you? We don’t fight over things like this.”

Argus took a deep breath, but his shoulders slumped forward, as if some of his determination had gone. “I went out for the cross-country team today.”

“And?”

“We had our first training run.”

“How’d you do?”

It took Argus a while to answer. “Third!” he said, as if there were a big oily glob of sludge on his tongue.

“You didn’t win?” Harlan asked, dumbfounded.

“No, I did not.”

“Who beat you?”

“Ronnie Camacho.”

“That skinny little nerd?” Harlan was grinning ear to ear.

“And Shannon Boersma.”

“Shannon Boersma? She’s a girl.”

Argus rolled his eyes. “I know she’s a girl. That’s why I’ve got to practice running on two feet, so I can finish first.”

Noble put a hand on Argus’s shoulder. “Just because we’re different—special, even—doesn’t mean we’re automatically the best at everything. There are a lot of good athletes at our school, and no matter how good we are at something, there will always be someone who is better, stronger, faster…”

“Maybe,” Argus said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to be the best. Coming third has given me a challenge and I intend to rise to it.” A pause. “Now, you can either fight me to keep me in the house, or you can step aside and let me do what I’ve got to do.”

Noble thought about it, then stepped aside.

“Thank you,” Argus said.

When Argus was gone, Harlan asked Noble, “Why’d you let him go?”

“Because I knew that I’d never be able to stop him.”

They went to the front door and watched Argus jog down the drive toward the road.

“Is he crazy?” Harlan asked.

Noble shook his head. “There’s just too much alpha male in Argus to let someone else win, even something as simple as a high school cross-country training run.”

“But he lets you be the leader.”

“Lets me be the leader is right. If he wanted to fight me for the leadership, he’d win, of course. But he knows that living in the human world requires more than brute strength. It requires a mind that can reason and use logic, and he knows he falls short on those. And after he beat the wild wolf pack’s alpha male in that fight, he probably thought he was invincible. So when he was beaten today by a skinny, nerdy human and a girl, it must have come as quite a shock to him.”

“Do you think he’ll get over it?”