Mike the White pressed his elbow against the wound in his side and kept eating. He had won that morning's fight, but the young raider's blade had bitten deeper than any blade should against him. Ten years ago the cut would have closed by nightfall. Now it throbbed with each swallow of stew. He was fifty and more, and he had spent every year of his strength on war instead of a wife. He wanted a trueborn son before his arm failed him. He feared his arm would fail him first. He sat alone at a long table in the tavern's common hall. Dark beams held up the low ceiling. Firelight moved on the gray stone wall. He tore his bread and did not look at the four women gathered near the bar. He could feel them looking at him. They were half-wolf, all four. Their ears turned toward him. They spoke low, and he caught none of it. "He's bleeding," said Sela Nightstalker, the one in green. "Left side. Trying to hide it." "He's not hiding it well," said Lira Moonpaw, in red. Dara Moonpaw watched him tear the bread. "Strong. Old." Nia Silvermane said nothing at first. She wore a gray tunic and stood a step ahead of the others, the way a leader stands. She had left her pack behind, and the three women beside her had no one to lead them now. She could smell the wound healing wrong. She could smell something else under it, thick and human, that the other three did not carry. "He's afraid," Nia said. "Not of the fight. Of after." "Afraid of what?" Lira asked. "Running out of time." Mike felt the weight of their attention like a hand on his shoulder. He set down his bread and turned to face them. He did not soften his stare. Men half his age looked away from that stare. These four did not. "Say it plain," he said. "You've been talking about me since I sat down." Nia crossed the floor. She stopped an arm's length from the table and looked at his side. "You're hurt," she said. "You won anyway. But it won't keep healing like that." "I know what I am," Mike said. "I don't need a wolf's nose to tell me." "You need something," Nia said. "A pack of women with no one to lead them. Does that sound like nothing to you?" Mike stared at her. He had wanted a wife and a son to carry his name. He had never once thought of it coming to him like this, offered by a woman who smelled his fear before he spoke a word. "Sit," he said. "All of you. If you mean to talk of leading, you'll talk to my face." Nia sat. One by one, the other three followed. The old warrior's plan for a bloodline had just changed shape in front of him, and he did not yet know if it saved him or trapped him.