Page 108 of A World Enough

The door began to slowly open, and she felt Camber’s fingers go into her fur and hold on. She was feeling anxious—Brogan could sense it.

When the doors were open halfway, they all got their first view of their welcoming party, a party of ten big wolves shifted to pelt and four in their human forms. Two wore the same uniform as the wolves they’d met with earlier via the ship’s comms, and the other two who were not shifted were a lot smaller, and submissive, and they had big smiles on their faces.

Camber felt relief but was still on edge.

This was really not the welcome they were expecting. All that was known about the GallowGlas wolves was that they kept to themselves. This wasn’t that.

They’d landed in a clearing of beautiful grass surrounded by huge pine trees, higher than Camber had ever seen before. She could understand Brogan’s wow moment, when she saw the world on the ship’s screen.

It was a beautiful place. A wolf’s paradise.

Brogan walked down the platform, and as Brogan explained would happen, she kept eyes dead on the Alpha, to show she was dominant. The Alpha’s wolf fur was black and tan. The one standing behind the Alpha was dark grey, white, and brown—she was the Alpha’s second, going by how Brogan had described pack structure.

Brogan continued forwards until she was snout to snout with the Alpha. Then the Alpha growled and bared her teeth. Brogan shifted her eyes to the side and put her snout down, to show the Alpha was the boss around here.

Camber gasped when the Alpha pushed Brogan onto the ground, in a play fighting kind of way, and then Brogan exposed her neck and allowed the Alpha to open their mouth and close its jaws around Brogan’s open neck.

Then the Alpha jumped back and howled, it seemed, happily. The rest of their wolves howled along too. Brogan jumped up and looked back at her and howled. Camber thought it had gone well.

Then all of a sudden the wolves, including Brogan, ran off into the trees.

Camber and the others walked down onto the grass with the two submissives, one who on first sight looked to be female, and the second a man. The two in uniform kept a short distance from their sides but were clearly their bodyguards.

“Welcome. I’m Mater of the pack, Enor, and this is the mate of our pack second, Kanni.”

Enor had long, soft, blond hair, and Kanni had long, tight black braids.

Camber took the lead. “Hi, Enor and Kanni, the wolf with us is called Brogan. I’m Camber, and these are our crew and friends, Morrigan, who I’m sure needs no introduction…”

“No,” Enor said. “We have traded with your mother. How is she?”

“Very well, I believe,” Morrigan said.

“Then there’s Thane, Margot and her husband Jhosa, and finally…can you keep a confidence?”

“Of course,” Enor said, “we have no business in selling secrets to the Abnobians.”

Kanni jumped into the conversation. “We know it’s Ziggy from Ziggy’s World anyway.”

Ziggy gave her a deep bow. “At your service.”

They sniggered at her, and Kanni said, “You’re sweet, Ziggy. We do good business with your establishments, don’t we, Ziggy?”

“Yes, we sell Unalla resin, but we’ll tell you about it when we get to my den for some tea.”

They followed the wolves to the side gate of a palatial log cabin. It surprised Camber just how much these wolves were like Brogan. Even if there was a connection in the past, she would have expected some differences, but so far, there were none.

They walked past a beautiful swimming pool. “We’ve normally got a bunch of cubs playing in the pool, but they are at school,” said Kanni.

Camber and the rest were taken into a sunroom that looked onto the pool.

“Welcome to my den,” Enor said. “Take a seat and we’ll bring out some drinks.”

“Thank you. You’re being very kind,” Margot said.

“We knew you were coming, so we baked some sweets and savoury breads,” Kanni said.

“You knew we were coming?” Camber said.