Chapter Text
The fire is lit and warm; the cold doesn't reach past the hut walls. The lamp on the windowsill throws its light alongside the crackling fire. The old woman sits in her rocking chair, holding her grandson in her arms, the chair rocking slow while the young pup lies snug against her chest. "Grandmother, tell me the old story again."
"Which old story is that, little one?"
"You know the one. From before, before the border stones."
"Ah, that story. Very well, long, long ago, before the borders, the packs didn't keep to their own sides of anything. They hunted together, shared their kills, their fires, carried meat to each other's doors through hard winters and asked for nothing back but the same, someday, when the winters turned on them instead. There were no alliances back then, pup. There didn't need to be, they trusted each other."
"So there were no head alphas and omegas then?"
"Oh, there were. There was order, child. The way there's order among the stars: alpha, beta, omega, each with a place, but a place wasn't a cage back then. An omega could stand in front of an alpha and not lower her eyes. Status told you where you started but it didn't tell you what you'd become."
"And the Dalhae? Tell me about the Dalhae."
"So that's what you were after." The old woman tickled the pup across his stomach and he laughed, shy, hiding his face in the crook of her neck before looking back up with anticipating eyes. "They say a Dalhae was born only once in a great while. One to a generation, across every pack that ever was. Always an omega, or so the old wolves believed, though what a Dalhae truly was, nobody living remembers anymore. And when a Dalhae walked among wolves, even the oldest alphas, the ones with blood older than the trees, went quiet and made room."
"Why did they make room?"
"Because a Dalhae didn't bow: not to a bloodline, no matter how proud and not to an elder, just for being old. They say a Dalhae could stand in front of the strongest wolf who ever lived and not falter, not even blink. Beautiful, the stories say, and gentle but defiant through and through."
"That sounds wonderful."
"It was, they say. But peace never lasts, little one. It never has."
"What happened to them?"
"There were those who couldn't stand seeing anyone above them; not even a Dalhae, not even the one thing in the world that bowed to no bloodline. So they hunted them; one by one, across the packs, across the long years, until there were fewer of them, and then fewer still."
"Did they kill them all?"
"Some say so. Some were killed out in the open and some just vanished from their dens one night and were never spoken of again. Their own families learned to hide what their children were. Then they learned to hide that they'd ever known at all and in time there was no one left to do the hiding, because there was no one left to hide."
"So that's why nobody knows what a Dalhae is now?"
"That's why. They faded from the world so completely; they faded from memory right along with it. Ask any wolf on patrol tonight what a Dalhae is and watch them shake their head. It isn't a secret. It's just gone. The way a name goes quiet once nobody's left to say it."
"Grandmother, is that the whole story?"
"Almost. There's one more thing worth telling, since you're old enough now to hear it. Do you know what a Silvertie is?"
"I've heard the word. I don't really know."
"A Silvertie is a bond, like a mating bond, but stronger. Sometimes it happens the moment two wolves meet. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, until one morning they just know. You look at someone and you know, without a word passing between you, that they're yours. Every wolf hopes to find theirs, one day, their soul mate, their other half."
"What does that have to do with the Dalhae?"
"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The old, old wolves used to say a Dalhae could see a Silvertie the way the rest of us see moonlight on water: invisible to everyone else, plain as day to them but that's a very old thing to say about a very old kind of wolf, and there hasn't been one to ask in longer than your grandmother's been alive."
"Do you think there really are no more?"
"I think, little one, that a bloodline is a hard thing to kill all the way through but that's only what I think. Now, it's late, and your mother will have my ears if I keep you up telling stories instead of letting you sleep." She lifted the pup off her lap and set him down, standing up herself. He didn't look pleased about it, his lower lip jutting out.
"One more question."
"No more questions. Sleep."