distracted manner. “I kind of like being around Mommy.”

With a sense of deja-vu, Luna smiled. 'Yep, she takes after Toby alright,' she thought, remembering how Toby had been nearly full-grown by the time he consented to take a home of his own.

Lily managed to disguise a derisive snort as an appreciative “Hm,” and turned to Angel. “What about you?” she asked.

While Luna nudged Star with a paw to make sure she wouldn't miss the smile coming her way, Angel nodded. “Yeah, I think it'll be fun,” she said. And from there, she and Lily began to chatter on rather aimlessly about various things of no real consequence. Angel wanted to ask why Lily hadn't mentioned the broken glass when they went to the butcher's shop, but Lily always somehow managed to deflect the conversation away until Angel realized the she was trying to avoid discussing it in front of Luna.

Lily, meanwhile, kept a surreptitious eye on Luna's reaction to the way she was interacting with the pup. Luna watched and listened more than she spoke at first, but soon found herself drawn into the conversation. Lily's manner was disarming, unobtrusive. Granted, she seemed a bit odd, but on the whole, harmless enough. Besides, she reasoned, if oddity were the sort of thing to deter her, she never would have ended up with someone like Toby.

“So,” she asked, “Do you live around here?”

Lily nodded. “Yeah, me and my owners are just a couple of blocks away.”

“I see,” Luna nodded. “Have you always lived around here?”

Lily shook her head. “No, we actually moved here from Juneau.” This was a lie, but Luna's nose wasn't as sharp as Toby's, and the telltale scent breezed right by her. Max had cautioned Lily about letting on that she'd been born in Nome; if Luna knew that and thought to ask around about her, the responses could be some real cover-blowers.

“How do you like it?” asked Angel.

Lily shrugged. “It's okay,” she admitted. “Kind of small-town for me, but I can deal.”

Luna smiled. “Well, I'm sure you'll like it here once you get used to the place.”

“Thanks,” said Lily, briefly flicking her tongue out on the side opposite from Luna to lick her chops. “I think I will.”

They continued in casual conversation for the rest of the walk, and Luna was not displeased to note that Lily seemed quite popular with the whole litter. Enough so that when they parted ways, every pup seemed disappointed.

“Do you have to go?” asked Melchior.

“Yeah, I'm afraid so,” said Lily. “But I'll be around. We can meet up again sometime.”

“Yeah,” agreed Caspar. “You can play with us in the lot!”

“The lot?” asked Lily, confused.

“It's the place where you first met up with Angel,” explained Luna.

“Oh, right.” Lily stopped for a moment, looking slightly worried. “How did you know that?”

“Toby told me,” Luna replied, confused that Lily was confused. “Remember, he met you about a week ago. Angel introduced you, didn't she?”

“Oh, oh yeah.” Lilly nodded energetically, masking that sense of paranoia common among criminals. “Well, I really oughta be going. I'll see you pups, and you too, Luna, some other time.”

Luna smiled cordially. “I'll be looking forward to it.”

Lily nodded. “So will I,” she said, trotting away.

Luna looked after her, pondering. 'So, that's the dog Toby's worried about?' she thought. Lilly seemed about as harmful as a daisy.

She brought the matter up with Toby later, at the end of the day after the pups were fast asleep. “The pups and I met Lily today while we were out for a walk,” she said.

Toby's eyes widened. Fathers, at least good ones, are instinctively protective, sometimes to ridiculous extremes. Toby was no exception, and Lily's reclusiveness had plucked at his already tight-strung paranoia like a guitarist. “What did she say?” he asked. “What did she do?”

Luna shrugged. “Not much,” she admitted. “She seemed just fine to me. A little awkward around me and the pups, but I wasn't what you'd call a model babysitter at that age either.”

His frown lessened, but only slightly. “Tell me what happened.”

She shrugged and proceeded to give a simple account of the meeting, skimming over Lily's thoughtless comment on Star's appearance. “Like I said, she didn't seem that threatening. Certainly not dangerous.”

He bit his lip. “I don't know...” he persisted.

“You said yourself that the scent was hard to place,” she pointed out. “It could have been a mistake.”

He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “It might have,” he admitted. He knew from experience that in both humans and dogs, tension or uncertainty often went with deception, and as such they had similar scents. And his olfactory organ was, admittedly, more trained for use in tracking than lie detection. “So, you think she's harmless.”

“I didn't say that,” she countered. “I just think the next time we run into her we should give her a chance, see how she behaves around the pups.”

His considered. His doubts still lingered, but after all, why jump to conclusions? Hadn't his father always said that everyone should have a chance to prove themselves? “Alright,” he agreed at last, “It's a deal.”

She smiled and gently kissed him on the nose. “Good,” she said.

It didn't take long for Lily's presence to become accepted, and even welcomed by Toby and Luna. She was popular with the pups, and Toby didn't have the heart to go on acting suspicious of someone his mate thought harmless and his children thought fun. So without even knowing he was doing it, he began to notice the scent less and less, helped by the fact that as Lily warmed to her job, her scent changed less when she lied or told a misleading truth. In no time at all, he had learned to dismiss it as just a natural quirk of her scent, combined with his own paranoia as a dad. In two weeks' time, the pack was ready to make their next move.

It came when Angel was out basking in the rare (for that season) Arctic sunlight. She lifted her head at the sound of paws plunking down on the wooden steps and saw Lily standing there. “What's new with you, pup?” she greeted.

“Lily, hi!” Angel yipped, jumping to her feet and wagging her tail. “Did you come to play?”

Lily yawned expressively, letting her tongue loll out of her mouth. “If I gotta,” she said, sounding bored. “I've been looking to get a chance to hang with just you, not your brothers and sisters.”

“Why?” asked Angel, tilting her head.

Lily raised a paw and examined it carelessly. “Well, I don't wanna diss them or nothing, but they're kind of goofy, you know? They're not hip like you.”

Angel's face scrunched up in confusion. “Hip?”

“Yeah, you know,” Lily explained, lowering her paw. “Fun, cool. The kind of dogs you wanna hang out and have a good time with. I mean, I like a good game of tag as much as the next dog, but it gets pretty old after a while.”

Angel nodded, accepting this readily; nearly everyone, young or old, likes to be thought of as more fun and likeable than their peers, and she was no exception. “What do you have in mind, then?” she asked.

Lily smiled. “Well, since you brought it up, I was thinking we could meet up with Max and the gang and go hang out somewhere.”

Angel's stomach growled at the memory of the last time she had “hung out” with the pack. “Butcher's shop?” she queried.

Lily nodded. “Yep,” she grinned. “Of course, if you don't wanna come...”

“No, no, I do want to come!” Angel barked. “But... everyone else will want to come too.”

“No sweat,” said Lily. “Just slip inside and ask your Mom real quiet, and we'll be outta here before you know it.”

Angel thought about it. The plan sounded simple enough.

“Oh, and don't mention the gang, okay?” added Lily. “Your folks'll wanna know about them, and if it takes too long your sibs 'll find out and we'll never get away.”

Angel nodded. She could certainly see the sense in that. “Okay, I'll be right back,” she said.

The pup crawled in through the pet flap and quickly found her mother. She was teaching Star to wash herself, and didn't notice Angel's approach until she felt a nose bumping against her thigh. “What... oh, Angel. Is something wrong?”

Angel shook her head. “No,”she replied. She hesitated a moment, then asked as quietly as she could, “Could you lean down here for a sec?”

Puzzled, Luna leaned down so that her ear was right next to Angel, who stuck her nose as far in as it would go before she whispered her request. Luna pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Did she say where you were going?” she asked.

Angel shook her head. “Just around,” she fibbed, knowing that Luna would be less likely to agree if she knew the true destination.

Luna thought for a moment. “Alright,” she agreed, “But don't be gone more than an hour or