There was a nip of chill in the air, unusual for mid-October. By rights, the weather should have remained temperate for another month, but it was already in the forties and twilight had not yet descended on the mountainside. It was going to be a bad winter.

From her perch on the high branch of the tree, Harper could see the valley below, still dressed in the dull greens of late summer. Though she hated the cold, she was glad they had come when they did. Over the next few days, the mountains would be exploding with yellow, gold, and vermillion, as well as the sickly-sweet scents of fall.

Harper loathed the cold. Moving to a tropical country was on her bucket list, in between becoming a Nobel laureate and learning to speak Cantonese. Her original plan had been to go to the reservation during the summer. That had been over a year ago, and it had seemed that every time they'd made plans, something had come up.

The first summer, Ian had taken an internship and refused to put his life on hold for Harper's “insane, ill-conceived, and suicidal” plan to study shifters. Jo was far more receptive, but had just started a “super serious” relationship with a guy named Jack who wore a fedora. After some serious groundwork, Harper had managed to excise Fedora Jack from their lives, but by then, it had been Fall trimester, and she'd been back for her last year of grad school. She would have gladly put her degree on hold, but both of her friends were still reticent about going.

By the following summer, Harper had her bag packed and waiting at the door. Without her friends, she had no real plan of how she would accomplish everything she wanted to do without going native. She recognized that they were a crucial part of her success, but at the same time she was impatient to go.

As luck would have it that summer, a documentary was released that chronicled a fledgeling documentarian’s weeks in a Canadian pack. It gave an unprecedented glimpse into life inside a modern shifter pack, and ignited a media frenzy. For weeks, you couldn't turn on the television without seeing clips of the documentary, or talking heads discussing whether or not the entire thing had been staged.

A startling number of Americans were inclined to believe that the documentary was nothing more than a well-crafted propaganda piece, produced by shifter rights activists. It didn't help that the producer and her camera man were both MIA, but had conveniently managed to get the footage back to their editor. Harper couldn't blame the media or the public for their skepticism. In the days of found footage films, it was often difficult to discern reality from clever fabrication.

If it had done nothing else, the documentary had served to convince her friends that going to the reservation with Harper was not as ill-conceived as it had initially seemed. Harper suspected that their aims were less fixed on affecting social change, as both of them had developed obvious crushes on wolves in the documentary, but Harper was prepared to the the intellectual heavy lifting.

“See anything up there?” Ian called from the ground.

Harper turned her binoculars on him. “I see a skinny male of vaguely European descent who's presently regretting his choice of cargo shorts.”

Ian flipped her off and then stuffed his hands back in his pockets. “I'm gonna try to start this fire on my own. Should I get a bucket of water first? I'm worried the flames might jump and start a huge forest fire.”

“Just start the fire, it'll be fine,” Harper said, redirecting her binoculars on the valley.

“Yeah, but what if the fire spreads across the entire reservation, and then I'm responsible for wiping out the Appalachian shifter population?”

“Our campfire is going to spread across two hundred thousand square miles?”

“Well, maybe not, but should we chance it?”

“Ian, in the time it's taken you to argue your point, you could have already been at the river.”

He hesitated, and then said, “So, you're saying I should go get the water, then?”

Ian was laughing as she pulled off a small branch and chucked it at him.

“Okay, okay, I'm going!”

It had been three days since they'd parked at a campground an hour out from Lynchburg. Crossing into the reservation had been easy enough. All they'd had to do was ignore the hundreds of signs warning them to stay on the trail, and then hop the stone fence that had been erected at the turn of the century.

There were no walls blocking off the reservation, or border patrols to keep shifters in and humans out. Just warnings and laws to penalize anyone who disregarded them. They had entered knowing full well that whatever information they gathered would be ill-gotten, and that they'd be subject to misdemeanor charges once they presented their findings. Over the years, Harper had acclimated Jo to lawbreaking, but Ian was stubbornly straight-laced, which was why it had surprised her when he'd suddenly become gung-ho about joining her in her elicit expedition. The potential to meet hot shifter females aside, she thought that he might want to one day use his involvement in the venture as a feather in his cap.

If they accomplished what they set out to do and managed to reinforce the burgeoning notion that shifters were more like them than not, then it could add fuel to the fire of revolution. When Ian eventually followed in his father's footsteps and made a bid for public office, he could regale constituents with his tales of his time among shifters, and how he fought for their equality.

In places like South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, local militias sometimes roamed the borders. Shifter sightings were more common there, and each state saw at least one or two attacks per year. From Virginia, all the way up to Maine, wolf shifters were almost never seen, or at least, their sightings were not reported. In New England in particular, there were still people who thought that shifters were a myth, though they were a dying breed in the era of social media and the 24-hour news cycle.

Most reasonable people believed that shifter sightings were uncommon in the north because there were fewer shifters living there. They postulated that the shifters preferred the warmer climate of the southern states, and couldn't hang with the cold northern winters. Harper had a different theory, which was that the shifters in the north were controlled by a handful of strong and stable leaders, whereas the ones in the south were more fragmented and aimless. Harper's goal was to find one such leader, and learn everything she could about he and his pack.

Something darted through her field of vision. Whatever it was, it was large and fast, and when Harper tried to follow it with her binoculars, she found herself at a loss. She released her binoculars. They tugged on the lanyard tethered to her neck and fell against her chest. With a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun, she squinted and scanned the valley. She saw no movement, save for the gentle sway of tree limbs on breeze.

She lifted her binoculars again, and after a few moments, she caught sight of a squirrel perched on a naked tree branch. Had it been a squirrel that she'd seen? Or perhaps a bird that had zoomed by. She didn't think so, and she tended to trust her intuition, but today she had a hard time making up her mind. She hadn't been sleeping as much. She'd been skipping out on rest in order to keep watch, and as a result she was more fatigued than usual. Now and again, her vision would get blurry and she'd have to blink several times to clear it.

“Now I definitely won't be able to sleep,” she muttered.

There was no way she was going to let either of her friends be on watch when the wolves made first contact.

As she climbed down from the tree, she reassured herself that they had not yet passed into a wolf's territory. Or at least, they hadn't encountered any of the telltale signs of doing so. And even by her best estimates, it would still be another week before they reached the outer bounds of the territory that they were headed for.

Ian was arriving back at the campsite as Harper's feet touched the ground. He set his bucket of water down and then crouched to begin working on the fire. Against Harper's recommendation, he'd decided to go full caveman and bring only a basic set of flint rock to build their campfires. Thankfully, Harper had brought her lighter, and after a few minutes of watching him struggle, she came and lit the tinder.

“Hey chef, what's on the menu tonight?” she asked as he produced a steel pot from his oversized camping bag.

“I prefer to be called Master of Non-Perishables,” Ian said. “And tonight we have some fragrant maple-cured beans and a lovely carrot puree.”

“Sounds divine.”

“Beans again?” Jo griped. She had finally returned from “scouting the area” which Harper knew was code for her evening bowel movement. “I take it you didn't spot any shifters?”

“Negatory,” said Harper.

“Boo,” Jo said, taking a seat beside Harper. She stretched out her legs and massaged her calves. “I'm so tired of all this walking. You know, I jogged around campus for four weeks straight trying to build up endurance for this trip and I didn't once consider that I'd be hauling a third of my body weight on my back.”

“I told you not to bring all of that crap,” Harper said. “Check my bag.”

“We're all well acquainted with your stupid bag,” Ian said.

“Seventeen pounds, and I'm gliding through these woods like a forest nymph.”

“And eating all of the beans I brought,” Ian said flatly. “Maybe your bag would be heavier if you thought to bring actual food.

“I'm just helping you to lighten your load, and I did bring food. When your cans run out in a couple of days, you'll be begging for my Soylent.”

“That stuff is so gross,” Jo said. “She tried getting me to have it for breakfast back home. It only tastes good if you blend it with fruit.”

“It's economical,” Harper said. “And you'll be glad for it when there's nothing else to eat.”

They made idle conversation as they ate. Once they ran out of commentary on the landscape and the weather, they drifted to the familiar region of friendly academic debate. When the three of them were together, they tended to bring out their more juvenile qualities, particularly their penchant for bickering. But just as often, they engaged in deep, intellectual discussions on life, culture, and humanity. It was what she liked best about her friends. They could be at the same time, highly intelligent, but also not be up their own asses with their intellect, like most in the academic community.

“I'm gonna go set up the tent,” Jo said after a spell of silence.

Harper nudged her. “Don't. Let's lay under the stars. It's a beautiful night.”

The sun had begun to set, casting the sky in deep blue and revealing a smattering of twinkling lights across the sky.

“It is. I've never seen so many stars in the sky. But it's also cold. I told you we should have waited for next summer to do this.”

“Yeah, next summer, when Ian's doing another internship and you're done with grad school and looking for a job. I'm sure that would be a great time.”

Jo stuck out her tongue. “You're done with grad school and you're still here.”

“That's because I can't hold down a job, duh.”

Jo looked to Ian and shook her head. “She really can't. I'm amazed people keep hiring her, when her longest tenure is four weeks.”

“Six weeks,” Harper corrected. “I used my two weeks paid vacation at the end.”

“They let you do that? That doesn't count!”

Jo got up and went to where the tent was, still packed away in its carrying case.

“Ignore me,” Jo said. “I'm just mad because I can’t decide on my thesis.”

“She's been a few weeks away from her thesis all year,” Harper told Ian. “She keeps submitting her ideas as an interrogative instead of a declarative statement.”

“Yeah, yeah. I'm insecure and lack confidence in my own magnificence,” Jo said. It amazed Harper that Jo was self-aware enough to recognize all of her flaws, but never really took any steps to work on them.

The tent was a quick setup. Jo only had to put a few pieces into place before it popped open. She crawled inside, setting up the two sleeping bags.

“What was your thesis on?” Ian asked Harper.

Jo answered for her. “The American civil rights movement as a precursor to shifter integration. It was freaking brilliant. I can't think of anything that smart.”

Harper snorted. “You remember my junior year lab partner, Pigtail Amy? She did her thesis on the cultural effects of pumpkin spice lattes.”

“Really?” Jo asked, poking her head from the tent. “What were the cultural effects? Do you think I could do salted caramel?”

Harper shook her head and laughed. “No, Jo. You're amazing. You're going to come up with something awesome, something evocative and thought-provoking. You can do so much better than latte flavors.”

Jo barreled from the tent and pulled her into a bear hug.

“Come sleep tonight,” Jo urged. “You're starting to look slightly less stunning than usual.”

“No way. I told you, I'm laying under the stars tonight.”

“And getting high?”

“And keeping watch. I don't smoke on the job.”

“I could keep watch,” Ian offered. “If you wanna get some sleep.”

Harper dismissed his offer.

Jo issued her goodnights and retired, leaving Harper and Ian to sit in companionable silence. Harper watched him stifle several yawns, before she finally nudged him.

“Go get some sleep.”

“In a few minutes.”

Harper lowered her voice to a whisper. “I know you're waiting for her to fall asleep so you don't have to have awkward pillow talk. Just go in there. I'd think she'd appreciate the company.”

It was the closest Harper would come to outright saying that Jo was interested in Ian. She actually did a decent job of hiding her feelings for him, considering she tended to get pretty obsessive when she dated.

Jo's relationship with Ian had been something of a slow burn. Now preparing for grad school, Ian had been a freshman when he had wormed his way into their duo. Back then, he'd been even more obnoxiously straight-laced and had been more like a kid brother than a potential partner. However, over the past few years, he'd come into his own. By Harper's metrics, he still looked like a kid, but if she tried analyzing him objectively, she could see how most women would find him attractive with his lean build, pretty eyes, and perfectly curled hair.

“Shut up,” Ian said. “We're not like that.”

“You could be,” she said coyly. “You have to lock that down before another Fedora-wearing loser beats you to it.”

“Jo isn't my type.”

Harper gave a soft sigh. “And like I told you the night we met, you're not my type.”

They'd met during College Night at a local haunt called Star Lounge. It was the one night per month that students between the ages of eighteen and twenty were allowed into the club, and Ian had come in with a group of his popular-in-high-school guy friends. Harper had been dragged along by Jo, who had gone to show her ex, DJ Kevin, that she was doing perfectly fine without him, presumably by drinking herself into a stupor and showing her breasts to the bartender. Jo didn't handle breakups well.

While trying to rein in her drunk friend, Ian had approached Harper, his friends looking on in awe as he delivered a corny pickup line and offered to buy her a drink. Harper had let him buy her two drinks, one for herself, and a second which she instructed him to deliver to a girl farther down the bar, one who wasn't way out of his league. Instead of slinking away like a wounded animal, Ian had doubled down on his pursuit of her. Impressed, Harper had spent the night educating him on how to properly approach a girl, and which girls would be receptive to his flirtations. They'd ended up closing down the bar, and he'd earned her number after helping her get Jo back to the apartment and into bed.

“Then what is your type?” Ian asked. He smiled, trying to seem casual, but Harper knew a forced smile when she saw one.

Even after four years, Ian still hadn't given up on her. He still dated from time to time, but never had any relationship that Harper would call serious, and whenever he was single he would always start feeling her out, as if she would suddenly change her mind about him.

“Why do you want to know? So you can try to be something you're not?”

His fake smile faltered. “No. I just want you to say it aloud so you realize how impractical your expectations are. Honestly, I don't think you know what you like. Every time you meet a guy, the first thing you do is start picking him apart, looking for even the smallest reasons not to like him so it's easier for you to kick him to the curb. Remember Jason?”

Harper rolled her eyes. “Which one? Afraid-of-Clowns Jason or Vegan Jason?”

“Why do you have to give them all shitty names? And I don't know, the one who biked.”

“That was Vegan Jason—Jason Greene, if it makes you feel better. And not only did chicken broth give him stomach cramps, but he also didn't have a car and rode everywhere on a bicycle. Grown men shouldn't ride around on bicycles.”

“He was an Olympic cyclist!”

“He competed in The Olympics. He didn't win any medals.”

“That still makes him one of the best cyclists in the world,” Ian said, throwing up his hands. “Fine, what about the brain surgeon?”

“He was a resident training to become a neurosurgeon, and he was so incredibly lame. I can't tell you how many times he would say—”

“—It ain't like it's brain surgery,” they droned in unison.

“Okay, okay,” Ian capitulated. “I remember. He was a total douche.”

“He was also kind of a hipster,” she told him. “One time, he asked me where I wanted to meet for coffee. I told him Boston Common and he was all, 'Oh, that place? But it's so pedestrian.'”

“All right, forget I mentioned him.”

Ian seemed inclined to let the topic go, but Harper had to go for one final laugh.

“Do you remember his name?”

His brows drew together as he thought back. “I remember it was something kind of stupid.”

Harper snickered. “It was Buzz.”

“Wait? Buzz the Brain Surgeon?”

“Yes!” she said, throwing her head back as she laughed. “That's exactly what I call him in my head. That, and Dr. Tighty Whities, but that's a whole 'nother story.”

Ian put an arm around her and pulled her to his side. Harper allowed it, because at her core, she craved physical contact with the people, regardless of whether or not it gave them the wrong idea.

He rested his cheek on the top of her head and for a while they watched the fire in silence. Until he spoke, Harper hadn't realized that she'd been bracing herself for his question.

“So who am I? What's my name in your head?”

“You're Ian,” she said quietly.

“Ian, what? Daddy's Boy Ian? Silver Spoon Ian? Can't Take a Hint Ian?”

“Stop,” she said, pulling away from him. “Just stop.”

He ran his hands through his hair, one after the other. “What does it matter if I'm shorter than you, or if I'm a few years younger? I know you, Harper. Maybe better than anyone.”

The sad thing was that he did know her better than anyone, save for Jo. It was sad, because he barely knew her at all.

She placed a hand on his cheek, knowing that he would see it as patronizing even though it wasn't her intention. There was a part of her that, more than ever, was desperate for him—for anyone—to see her for what she was.

“Ian, you know what I want you to know.”

There might have been a correct combination of words that, had he used them in that moment, might have finally caused her to open up to him and trust him as she hadn't trusted anyone in a very long time.

Of course, like most people, Ian was too absorbed in his own crap to see hers. Without saying anything, he got up, kicked off his boots, and went inside the tent.

For a moment, Harper sat frozen in place. She never cried, except on the rare occasions when she woke from nightmares. She wanted to cry now, but as soon as her eyes began to sting, she heard a familiar, mocking voice.

Cry, cry, cry. All you ever do is cry. When are you going to realize no one cares about you? That they only comfort you so that you'll shut up?

Harper knew better than to cover her ears, as it would only make the voice louder. Instead, she took a few deep breaths and focused her attention on the sounds around her. The crackling fire, the sounds of crickets and frogs, and the wind.

Once she regained herself, she grabbed her gloves from her bag and went back to the tree she'd climbed earlier in the evening. It took her a few minutes to get back to the thick, forked branch, and a few more minutes to get comfortable. She took a joint and a lighter from her pocket and lit up.

She smoked more than she should have, smoked until she could fancy herself floating and not reclined on a hard branch. The stars above her seemed to pulse, as if to the beat of a drum, or to her own heartbeat. No thoughts crowded her mind and no voices competed for space in her head. For a short time, she simply was.

In that state, falling asleep was as easy as blinking. One minute, she was staring into the abyss of stars. Her eyes closed, and when they opened, the stars were fading, being replaced by early morning sunlight.

She had come to awareness so sharply that she knew there must have been a reason. Some sixth sense had roused her prematurely, and her first guess was that she might have moved and her body woke her before she rolled from the tree. Still, she was cautious as she tilted to the side, careful not to make a sound as she surveyed the ground.

Harper saw the wolves at once. Their earth-toned pelts made them blend in well with their surroundings, but they were the only things moving on the forest floor. She put them at three hundred feet from the campsite, closing in slowly and possibly from all sides. There were three that she could see, a dark-haired one the size of an average wolf, and two larger ones that could have been beta wolves.

Even if Jo and Ian had been awake and prepared to defend themselves, they wouldn't have stood a chance. Harper wouldn't have been able to take the wolves herself, either. Not without a gun, anyway, and they'd been adamant about not bringing guns. Harper did, however, have a knife that she kept in her boot. It wouldn't be enough to fend off all three wolves, but it might make them wary of attacking, especially if she didn't show fear. Wolves became uneasy if their prey didn't become afraid.

Of course, she had to do her due diligence. It was possible that the wolves were simply wary of the unknown humans. They might be assuming a defensive formation without any real intention of attacking. In that case, by drawing a weapon, Harper would be setting the tone for their interaction, and the tone would be violence. First and foremost, she had to establish that they meant no harm to the wolves.

Quickly and quietly, she began to climb down from the tree. She was halfway down when she determined that the wolves would reach the tent before she reached the ground, and in a move she instantly regretted, Harper jumped down the rest of the way.

Pain shot through her knees, and for a second, she thought she might have sprained or even broken something. She forced herself to take a few staggering steps, and found that she could walk, albeit uncomfortably.

The wolves were instantly alerted to her presence. They switched their focus on her, but continued to advance at the same slow, eerie pace. It gave Harper enough time to go to the tent, but she didn't call for her friends. She knew that despite how aggressively she'd prepared them for this moment, they would still panic.

“We're not here to harm you or yours,” Harper said, holding up her hands to show that she was unarmed.

She spoke softly, knowing their keen ears would pick up every word. There was only a slight possibility that they wouldn't speak English. Unlike packs in other countries, where it was a toss up as to whether they spoke the national language, or some bastardization of native languages, there had only been two observed packs in The Greater Appalachian Reservation that spoke Native American dialects, and both had been documented over thirty years ago, back before The Appalachian Expansion of the early nineties, when the shifter population had been decimated.

In spite of their aversion to humans, human culture and language flourished among wolf packs, to an extent that many modern researchers weren't even aware of. Talking to a shifter, even one who had never seen the world beyond the reservation, was not much different than talking to any human raised in a different region. Some words were pronounced a little differently, and there might have been some slang or euphemisms you wouldn't be familiar with, but for the most part, they were clearly Americans. This was owed, in large part, to the influence of their human mothers, who unconsciously and sometimes deliberately, passed along their culture while raising their pups.

“We have no interest in fighting, but we will be forced to defend ourselves if you attack,” Harper continued. “We're researchers. We only want to talk.”

Her hand twitched as they entered lunging distance. She was fully prepared to go for her knife, but at the same time knew that once she did, all bets were off.

She was briefly relieved when they stopped twenty feet from her and sat. After a few seconds, when none of the three made any move to shift into human form, she became suspicious. She scanned the area for a fourth wolf, one in human form that would communicate with her, but she saw only the three stoic wolves, their eyes fixed on her with marked indifference.

She might have heard a leaf crunch, or perhaps she simply felt the air being displaced. Either way, she realized too late that she was being assaulted from behind. It put her at a disadvantage, having to react, rather than attack, as the sack came down around her head and something dealt a hard blow to the center of her back.