But she still felt the same way she had that first day at boarding school. Exactly the same.
Alex flexed her fingers into fists and strode out the door.
* * *
She was the one.
He knew her scent as he knew his own. She was the lost one, the companion, whose words still lived within his mind.
He followed her as she scouted the woods each day, tracking the other wolves whose territory this was; watched from cover when she found his prints in the snow. She had seen him once or twice, when he’d been less than cautious, but there was no fear in her. That was as it should be. She had never been afraid in that time Before.
Before. The memories returned in images brief and blinding as sunlight striking snow crystals. Feelings he was only beginning to comprehend. Needs that were part of the other self he had almost forgotten.
He had heard her voice, and it was the same and different. “I’ll help you,” she had said, Before. “Don’t go, don’t be afraid, I’ll help you…”
His other self remembered pain and loss. Time had no meaning to the wolf he was, but to the other it was terribly real. Time passing, and mysterious purposes left unfulfilled. He wanted to run from the new thoughts, but she held him here.
And there was something else that spoke to him, something that had emerged out of nowhere to speak inside his head. Go back, it said. Remember what you are.
The scents of mating came to him on the late-winter winds; he heard the nearest pack squabbling as they prepared for the season of new life. Only he ran alone. But there was a great urgency inside him, and it would not be laid to rest until he went to her as he had done in the time Before.
You must go back.
He flung new-fallen snow from his coat as she returned to her den, and thought of his empty belly. A hunt—long and arduous, because he always hunted alone—and then rest. His other self knew there was more, much more. Soon there would be an end to hiding. Soon he would go back. Soon they would be together again.
Soon.
He turned on his paws and melted into the shadows of the forest.
* * *
” ‘Those God-cursed wolves.”
“A guy could die of old age before those government people get out here to do what they were hired to do.”
“You got that right. Damned if I’ll sit around and watch those wolves tear up another of my cows.”
Alex paused behind the shelf of canned vegetables, her hand tightening around a jar of pickles. The small general store in Merritt was a favorite gathering place for the local farmers and anyone else in the mood for chewing the fat. It was also the place to hear the latest town gossip, and during the two weeks since her arrival Alex had taken advantage of that fact as often as the natives.
She made it a point to learn who her enemies were.
“What d’ya think, Sigurd? What do you say we take care of this ourselves?”
Silence followed, as if the other farmers were acknowledging the seriousness of the question. Alex set down the jar and moved along the aisle, crouching to keep the top of her head from rising above the boxes on the highest shelf.
“I don’t know, Howie. I’ve seen that black wolf. He’s big. If he’s anything like the one a few years back—”
“The one old man Arnoux was after,” Howie said, his voice heavy with significance. “Five years ago. The same time that girl was found torn apart near the reservation.”
Alex waited tensely. There was a silence full of unspoken meaning. Boots shuffled on the wet floor.
Dutch, an older man Alex had always known to be reasonable and levelheaded, gave an inelegant snort. “Hey, now. The police said that was a man’s work. No wolf—”
Howie rounded on the older man. “I saw the body. I don’t give a damn what the cops say. I know what Arnoux believed, and no one knows more about wolf killings than he does. His own parents were killed by wolves up in Canada. He—”