Prince of Shadows by Susan Krinard

Perfect father wolf, she thought. But it rang false. Utterly false.

Kieran looked up as she came near, and his expression changed—subtly, intimately. Drawing her in to the golden vortex of his eyes.

“He likes kids, doesn’t he?”

Alex cleared her throat. Deanna stood just behind her, hands clasped at her back. She smiled hesitantly at Alex.

“Yes,” Alex murmured. “I guess he does.”

Deanna scuffed the carpet with her sneakers. “He’s a wolf researcher, like you, right?”

Alex was almost relieved to turn away from Kieran and focus on Deanna. “He knows a lot about wolves.” She cast about for a change of subject. “Do wolves interest you, Deanna?”

“Yeah.” She looked at the space between her feet. “Would you mind—could you tell me how you got started? Studying wolves, I mean?”

Alex relaxed. She found it easy, almost comfortable, to talk to the girl; this was Alex’s element, her passion, and the one thing she’d never had any trouble sharing with anyone who could be persuaded to listen.

Deanna needed no persuading. They found a relatively quiet corner of the room, where Deanna sat cross-legged at Alex’s feet, like a disciple before a master. She seemed fascinated even by the heavily edited version of Alex’s early years in Minnesota, and how her love of wolves had come from that.

“For a while, while I was growing up, I… had different plans,” she told Deanna. “But eventually I went to the university and got a degree in wildlife biology. After I graduated I started working in Montana and Yellowstone as part of the wolf reintroduction programs there.”

“Reintroduction?” Deanna echoed.

Alex warmed to her subject. “Except for Minnesota, there are very few wolves south of the Canadian border. I worked with other researchers to trap packs and transport them to this side, establish them in the states they’d previously inhabited.” She sighed. “It wasn’t easy. Many people are opposed to having the wolves return.”

“I know people like that,” Deanna said. “Yes. People who don’t understand, who’re afraid wolves will take away their stock, their livelihood. Studies have shown that those problems can be dealt with just as they have been here in Minnesota, with programs like Animal Damage Control, but some people try to take matters into their own hands—”

“By poisoning and hunting,” Kieran interjected. He appeared at Alex’s shoulder; his eyes seemed very dark, and his expression was tense as it hadn’t been all through the visit. Was he remembering being poisoned, as yesterday he’d remembered being hunted? She’d put out of her mind that he almost certainly was the livestock killer the farmer were after. Until now that small fact had been the least of her worries.

Now was certainly not the time to bring it up.

“You said you trapped wolves, Alexandra,” he said. She hadn’t imagined the edge to his voice. “Yes. I never enjoyed it, but it was necessary. For the wolves. to save them, to bring them back where they belong.”

“To save them.” Kieran looked right through her. “For their own good.”

Alex smiled deliberately at Deanna, who was regarding Kieran in silent bewilderment. “We’re always working on better ways to do it, Deanna. A leading researcher has already developed a new kind of radio collar that makes repeated trapping unnecessary once the wolves are relocated. It’s called a capture collar—”

“Collar.”

Something in the way Kieran repeated the word brought her up short. He was standing perfectly still, eyes half-closed. Remembering. Alex was certain of it.

“Of course it’s not ideal,” she continued slowly, looking back at Deanna, “but it’s much safer for the animal than continually using darts or traps. The collars allow us to monitor movement, capture the wolves with minimal trauma in order to take samples, and…”

She lost the thread of her words. Kieran had begun to breathe very deeply. “Collared,” he rasped. “Trapped. Couldn’t live that way. Had to run…”

“Is he… is he all right?” Deanna whispered.

Alex touched Deanna’s arm, thinking quickly. “He has bad dreams sometimes. Kieran? Maybe you need a little fresh air.”

He gave a strange, almost wild look and brushed past her, striding to the door.

Deanna folded her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry he got upset. What was he talking about?”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *