Waxing Gibbus.
"Sure you didn't forget anything?" Alfie asked, the crust of late spring snow crunching beneath his boots as he flanked Nate. "A cow? Three goats? A suitcase full of cash?"
Nate pressed his lips together, refusing his second the satisfaction of earning either his amusement or his annoyance. "You sound racist. Or xenophobic. Or both." He said, pressing on through the white pines.
"And you're acting just like my vaari ." Alfie countered, affecting the old-country accent his grandfather had never shaken. "My johtaja arranged every one of my brothers' and sisters' kietoas, and I arranged every one of my sons' and daughters'—"
"Yeah, yeah, and everything was better back in Suomi. W e know." Nate finished, finally cracking a smile even as he rolled his eyes at the invocation of the old country their elders so loved to wax poetic about.
"If I want the old guard to get on board with moving this pack forward the way I want to," Nate began, a certain drone to his tone that suggested he'd recited this rationale a dozen times or more. "I need to reassure them that I still value the traditional ways too."
"Yeah, god forbid you spit in the face of tradition by—gasp! Choosing your own mate? Scandalous. Untenable. Outrageous. Nathaniel Greyson, you monster!" Alfie leaned in, sticking his hand in Nate's face, holding an invisible microphone. "Tell me, Nate, what is it like to hate your own culture and everything it stands for?"
Nate shoved his hand away.
"Get off my tail, Alf. It's done. And this settlement with Sayer Springs saves me the headache of the elders trying to shove a local girl my way."
" That," Alfie said, "Is one silver lining I can agree with you on." Packs were insular as a rule, and by a certain point in life everybody ended up having some history with everybody else, for better or worse.
They both slowed, not from any signal from either man but at a splash of color through the grey-brown of the tree trunks ahead of them. At the boundary line, as agreed upon, a rusted red pickup was parked.
Nate caught the scent of a cigarette, beneath it the sour stickiness of stale beer, and adjacent to it, lifted by the cool breeze that was still more winter than spring, a hint of artificial vanilla.
"You know what," Alfie snapped his fingers, "I just remembered, it's actually the bride who brings the cow, not the groom." He craned his neck. "If you get two cows, can I have one?"
Nate sighed, squaring his shoulders and setting his gaze forward, strong and steady and calm.
"Alfie?"
"Yeah, boss?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"Roger that."
The two men walked through the trees.