Chapter One
Clusters of snowflakes grouped together, forming large chunks of what looked like cotton candy falling from the sky. The steady thwack, thwack of the windshield wipers kept pace with Mary Locke's heart as she drove along the deserted highway. Her hands clenched around the steering wheel, and she shivered, even though the heat was turned on full blast.
Her inner Wolf leaped with joy for the snow, but she reined it in. She had to get away as fast as she could. She couldn't stop and play.
The money her father had given her for groceries and to refill the car with gas before she had left the farm that morning sat folded in a Ziploc bag on the passenger seat. It would be enough to get her to the nearest airport, and she had already booked her ticket from a library computer using the credit card she paid the family bills with.
Was this the right thing to do? Mary swallowed hard, glancing at the clock. It had been two hours since she had left home. She still had half an hour before she was meant to get home. The farm was forty minutes from the nearest town, and shopping for thirteen children and her parents always took a long time. Plus her father had given her permission to spend some time reading in the library. By the time they came to look for her, she would be long gone.
Mary's hands tightened, her knuckles turning white. How could she do this? Just abandon her family like this? What will they do without me?
At twenty-four years old, Mary was the oldest of thirteen children. With the youngest just a year old, it was up to her to do the laundry, make meals, buy groceries, help the younger ones with their homework, and nurse her mother in her ill health. Would all this responsibility fall on sixteen-year-old Julia now? The older boys all worked with their father, taking care of the livestock, mending fences, fixing tractors and various other activities on the farm. They didn't have time for women's work!
No, Mary told herself. You are not going back. There's no place for you there.
That is what her mother had told her two months ago when Mary had finally bolstered her courage enough to ask if her father could talk to David Monroe's father about David courting her. David was a nice young man. He had always been kind to her.
"Nobody wants a lazy girl for a wife," Mary muttered under her breath, remembering her mother's words. "There is no place for you there."
She didn't think she was lazy, but when she was twelve, she topped off her height at five-foot-seven. The rest of her didn't get the memo. Now amply sized, when the others in the Wolf community saw her, compared with her lean and muscle brothers and sisters, they shook their heads and told her that if she would do a little more during the day, she would thin out that waist.
Tears blurred Mary's eyes. When do I have time to do anything else? Even now, escaping from the home she didn't belong to, she wanted to scream it out loud. She didn't know where she would go from here, but even the unknown was better than what she was leaving behind!
As she raised a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes, she felt the car lurch to the side. A gasp tore from her lips, and she instinctively began pumping the brakes, as her father had taught her. Her heart pounded in her ears, and the car skidded across the road. She stopped with a sudden jolt, the seatbelt digging into her neck as it stopped her from being flung out the window.
Mary took a moment to calm her racing heart. She had slid off the road into a drift, but nothing hurt, and she hadn't hit any trees, she could make it out.
The engine spluttered and died.
"No." Her fingers trembled as she turned the key. Not even a faint whirring. "No!"
What now? What were her choices? I could freeze to death trying to get to the next town. She couldn't remember how far it was. Or I could go back.
She was not going to go back.
Determined, Mary climbed into the back seat for the old blanket that was always in the car for just this type of emergency. Winter in the Rocky Mountains was hazardous, even more so in an old car like this one.
She quickly folded tied the edges together, sticking her bag of money into it before taking off her clothes and also putting them in the blanket bundle. She shivered as the cold penetrated into her, but tied the bundle tightly around herself, looping it over one shoulder and under the next so that it pressed against her chest.
A blast of wind made goose bumps spring out on her arms as she stepped from the car. Mary called to the Wolf in her bones, and it happily consumed her.
She began trotting, her ears constantly rotating for the sound of oncoming vehicles. Her breath came in bursts as she inhaled and exhaled the fresh, clean air, feeling more alert than she had for a long time. It had been too long since she'd allowed her Wolf to have its freedom other than on the full moon when she didn't have a choice in the matter. With a yip she burst into a run, her fur smooth and glistening against her round, plump sides. Running with her Wolf truly was the best feeling in the world.
She saw the bear just in time to avoid it as it burst onto the road. A huge, dark-brown grizzly, it stopped the instant it saw her. Massive muscles rippled under its fur. A fresh scar ran jagged down the side of its face, black against pale skin, curved like a bass clef.
And then it came for her.
Mary's heart skipped a beat as adrenaline surged through her. She bolted at once; ears flattened against her skull; tail lowered to streamline herself the best she could. The bear's grunts and heavy footfalls chased after her.
She dashed into the pine forest. The snowdrifts nearly buried her, but she plowed ahead. The imagined feeling of teeth tearing into her urged her to go even faster. Her heart hammered so hard she thought it would explode.
By the time she realized that the bear had given up the chase, the heavy snow had thickened. She shivered, settling beneath a tree, eyes darting through the shadows. There was nothing there. Her fur was still on edge, and she licked in back down to calm herself.
No harm done, she told herself. It was just an old, dumb grizzly bear.
Still, she didn't know how far she was from the road, and with the snow coming down, she was going to lose her way if she didn't hurry back to it. Trying to put the bear from her mind, she headed back down the path she came though she jumped at every moving shadow. The snow seemed to muffle everything. If she was home, she would be cooking supper by now. Four-year-old Simon would be underfoot, trying to steal an early mouthful.
Were they out looking for her by now? Or was Father keeping an eye on the road while he did chores, counting the stripes his belt would put on her backside? Was Julia keeping the house in order, or had Conrad Milton, the skinny little half-human from two farms down, come to take her for a walk around the pond? Was Mother calling for her while the baby cried with a soiled diaper?
Mary's legs burned with the effort of pushing through the drifts and she sat a moment, shivering as the snow melted and trickled into her fur. Wide green eyes darted from side to side, looking for a place where she could take shelter for the night. She did not want to repress her Wolf so she could use her hands to build herself a snow hut.
The sound of an engine close by made her ears spring up. Her whole body tensed as she got back to her feet, rotating her ears to find which way it was coming from. There! She loped towards the noise, deviating from the path she had taken when she ran from the bear.
After only a few meters, she stumbled out of the trees and onto a road. Frozen gravel bit into her paws from under a layer of packed snow. Her head swiveled, and she made out a dim light from her left. Quickly she suppressed her Wolf, forelegs transforming into arms, chest rising, spine straightening.
The cold wind was like a punch to the stomach. Mary's hands shivered as she dug her dress from her sack and yanked it on. It was half-frozen, and her teeth began chattering.
A giant white truck came into view. Mary moved off the dirt road but waved her arms to get the driver's attention. "Stop!"
The truck slowed to a stop. Mary yanked the door open. A rush of warm air washed over her face, making her sigh in relief.
"Get in," a deep, male voice said. "You look half frozen to death!"
Mary gratefully climbed into the truck. The warmth felt so good it hurt, and her shivering increased. "Thank you," she chattered. "I got lost. Can you take me to the city? I have a flight to catch."
"No. Avalanche closed the roads." The man grunted, turning the heat up.
Mary's heart sank. Now there was nothing to do but go home. But when she turned and got her first look at the man, her words died in her throat.
The first thing she noticed was that he was insanely beautiful. Liquid black eyes stared out of a tanned face that belonged on the cover of a magazine. He had high cheekbones, and a wide, full mouth. Dark brown hair was pulled back into a bun at his crown, and with his neatly trimmed beard, he looked like he should be wielding a war hammer and commanding lightning.
"My name is Andre," he said, unsmiling. "Andre Mitchel."
"Mary Locke," she whispered back.
It wasn't his beauty that caught her voice in her throat. It was the scar on his cheek, black against his skin, curved into the shape of a bass clef.