Livestock. Man’s possessions, lethally guarded by guns and poison.
Alex backed away, toward the hall closet where she kept her seldom-used dart gun. In Canada she and her fellow researchers had used guns like it to capture wolves for collaring and transfer to new homes in the northern United States. She hadn’t expected to need it here.
Now she didn’t have any choice. Shadow leaned against the wall patiently as she retrieved the gun and loaded it out of his sight. She tucked it into the loose waistband of her jeans, at the small of her back, and started toward the door.
Shadow wagged his tail. Only once, and slowly, but the simple gesture cut her to the heart. It was as if he saw her as another wolf. As if he recognized what she’d tried to do for him. She edged to the opposite side of the door and opened it.
Biting air swirled into the warmth of the cabin, Shadow stepped out, lifting his muzzle to the sky, breathing in a thousand subtle scents Alex couldn’t begin to imagine.
She followed him and sat at the edge of the porch as he walked stiffly into the clearing. “What are you?” she murmured. “Were you captive once? Were you cut off from your own kind?”
He heard her, pausing in his business and pricking his ears. Golden eyes held answers she couldn’t interpret with mere human senses.
“I know what you aren’t, Shadow. You aren’t meant to be anyone’s pet. Or something to be kept in a cage and stared at. I wish to God I could let you go.”
The wolf whuffed softly. He looked toward the forest, and Alex stiffened, reaching for the dart gun. But he turned back and came to her again, lifted his paw and set it very deliberately on her knee.
Needing her. Trusting her. Accepting. His huge paw felt warm and familiar, like a friend’s touch.
Once she’d loved being touched. By her mother, by her grandparents—by Peter. She’d fought so hard to get over that need, that weakness.
Alex raised her hand and felt it tremble. She let her fingers brush the wolf’s thick ruff, stroke down along his massive shoulder. Shadow sighed and closed his eyes to slits of contentment.
Oh, God. In a minute she’d be flinging her arm around his great shaggy neck. Wrong, wrong. He was wolf, not a pet dog. She withdrew her hands and clasped them in her lap.
He nudged her hand. His eyes, amber and intelligent regarded her without deception. Like no human eyes in the world.
“I won’t let them kill you, Shadow,” she said hoarsely “No matter what you are, or what happens. I’ll help you, I promise.” She closed her eyes. “I’ve made promises I wasn’t able to keep, but not this time. Not this time.”
Promises. One to a strange, lost boy weeping over the bodies of two murdered wolves. A boy who, like the first Shadow, she’d never found again.
And another promise to her mother, who had died to save her.
The ghost of one had returned to her at last. The wolf whined and patted her knee, his claws snagging on her jeans. A gentle snow began to fall, thick wet flakes that kissed Alex’s cheeks with the sweetness of a lover. She turned her face up to the sky’s caress. Shadow leaned against her heavily, his black pelt dusted with snow-flakes.
If only I could go back, she thought. Back to the time when happiness had been such a simple thing, when a wolf could be a friend and fairy tales were real. She sank her I fingers deeper into Shadow’s fur.
If only—you were human. A man as loyal, as protective, as fundamentally honest as a wolf with its own. A man who could never exist in the real world. A fairy-tale hero, a prince ensorcelled.
She allowed herself a bitter smile. The exact opposite of Peter, in fact.
And you think you’d deserve such a man if he did exist?
She killed that line of thought before it could take hold, forcing her fingers to unclench from Shadow’s fur. “What am I going to do, Shadow?” she said.