The scent of pine, spruce, and elm hung heavy in the air as our pack of six loped through the frozen forest. Ice stuck to our fur, and our breath left great billows of steam behind us like freight trains on some lonesome, unforgiving landscape. But, still, we plowed on, the snow nearly up to the bellies of our large wolf bodies.

The world seemed quieter tonight, the several feet of driven powder accumulated around the bases of the trees, cushioning the sounds of the forest. It was dark, with the moon hiding behind the heavy winter clouds. Up ahead, Frank O’Dwyer darted beneath a tree and ran along a deadfall log, showboating like normal. He slipped on a patch of icy bark and fell in a hail of flailing limbs into a mound of snowy fluff, growling as he was submerged in the drift.

I shook my head at his antics as he rushed out of the snow and tried to shake himself dry.

A cold wind whipped out of the northwest, down from the mountains. Mary, our pack leader’s foster daughter, turned right into it, tipped her head back, and let loose her own high-pitched howl of defiance. This far from any human settlement, she could. If we were near our home, Enchanted Rock, our alpha, Peter, wouldn’t let that shit slide.

After all, wolves hadn’t returned to the High Rockies. Only shifters had. Only we had.

The wolves of Frost Security.

I gave a low howl, letting it join and mingle with Mary’s, and our combined night-singing soared out over the white valley.

Colorado. Never thought a city boy like me, Jacob Wayne, would ever call a place like this home. Not in a million years.

I grew up in the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Dark nights, planes flying into LAX the only stars to light the night sky. Prostitutes, pushers, all night taquerias, gangbangers, and movie stars whose dreams of the silver screen were never realized. Clubs, bars, traffic, the smell of car exhaust and human flesh thick in your nose.

I hadn’t even seen snow before Peter Frost and Richard Murdoch invited me to join their security group in Enchanted Rock. Turns out I hate the stuff unless I’m in this body, my wolf form. Guess I should have checked the weather reports before I made the move. Coldest it ever got back home was down into the forties. When I went over to play in the sandbox with the rest of the Marines, Baghdad barely got below freezing.

But snow?

Peter stopped his shuffle through the deep powder ahead, his tail sticking straight up, waving back and forth like a flag on a breezy day. We all smelled it. We all smelled the hot blood on the wind. Rabbit. Prey.

Immediately, my hackles went up and my mouth began to salivate. I fought the urge to bolt after the smell. No, I reminded myself, this one was for the kid. Not for me. But, damn, controlling my urges out here in the wild was hard. The singing in my blood just became too strong sometimes.

Peter glanced back over his shoulder and locked eyes with Mary.

She gave a little wolf whimper and headed up through the pack. She cut a trough through the white powder, steam rising from it as she struggled on her way. Out here, we couldn’t help but leave tracks in the snow. They were big paw prints from wolves the size of small ponies. Any hunter in their right mind who found them would think it was just kids’ antics, teenagers having a bit of a fun.

We knew, though, that eventually someone would figure things out and start to ask questions, especially when evidence of our passing was just so damn obvious in this kind of weather. They might even, dare I say it, write a blog about us.

We stayed out here during the winter, far from human settlements. So what if there was a howl or two at night? They’d probably chalk it up to just a cold norther blowing in, whistling among the trees and rocks as it passed down into the valley.

Mary leaned her flank against Peter’s as she came abreast of him, and they both panted in unison.

See that ahead? He seemed to ask with a low growl and a shake of his silver head. You need to catch that rabbit.

Ears slicked back, she craned her head and strained her eyes as she sought her prey. She gave a low whine as she spotted it. Thumper? Got it.

Peter glanced back, shooting us all a look accompanied by a little twitch of his tail. We were to circle around and be ready to cut off its escape if it bolted. Not too far, though. If we made it upwind of the little guy, he’d be off without a moment’s warning.

Matthew Jones, our fire investigator, caught my attention with his reddish-blonde, snow-encrusted fur, and too-human eyes. Right side?

I nodded. Tails tucked and bodies low, the two of us headed out and circled counterclockwise in a wide perimeter. Frank and Richard circled left. All four of us needed to be in place before Mary made her move.

Matt and I crouched low in a bank of snow, barely breathing as we waited. Teaching the girl to properly hunt like this took me back to the desert, to the first time I’d gone hunting with Alex, my first alpha. He’d been a hard son of a bitch, but he sure could hunt, even with just the darkness to cover his approach. He was nothing compared to Peter, though, both as an alpha or as a hunter—most importantly, though, as a friend.

Minutes ticked by as Mary crept closer through the deep snow, barely making a sound as the rabbit munched on a stray leaf.

Early hunters rush headlong into things. They think raw strength and unvarnished speed is what it takes to bring down your prey, but they’re wrong. It’s patience and determination. I learned that early on with Alex. I carried it on with me when I became a homicide detective.

Another minute. Another. Still another.

And then, there she was!

Snow flew through the air as she erupted from the white powder, her nose guiding her as she arced through the air like a furred missile. She plummeted to the earth without a sound, only growling as her jaws locked tight around the rabbit’s neck, cracking it with a swift bite and twist. Thumper only had a moment to whimper before its life was gone, snuffed out by our little orphan from Oklahoma.

When Mary had come to us, she’d been a poor hunter, unsure of her skills or her size. She hadn’t even wanted to run with us or to even meet us in our wolf form, which was understandable. When the only shifters you knew were your family, and they were suddenly taken from you with no warning or reason, you might be a little touchy about sharing that side of your life.

I could understand where she was coming from. I was still uncertain of my own wolf form. The other guys all seemed to be able to control themselves while they were in their wolf forms, but sometimes it took me every ounce of will I had to keep my instincts in check. I never really had problems with humans, but something about the smell of wild game and prey just lit up my predator’s brain like the Griswold house on Christmas.

Eventually, though, Peter was able to coax Mary from her shell and get her to come run with us.

And now she’d done it! She made her first kill of the winter!

All around her, we yipped and yelped in excitement, and went bounding through the heavy snow as we went to congratulate her on her prize.

She whimpered excitedly, holding it up by the ears for all to see—a dark form of brownish, gray fur, dripping fat crimson drops onto the snow as she shook it happily like a puppy with a new toy.

She turned and dropped the rabbit’s corpse in front of Peter’s, its body still warm and blood still flowing. She nosed it towards him, pushing it through the accumulated powder. It was his right to take the first bite of his pack’s kill.

He turned and looked at all of us, his face solemn. Then he broke into one of his rare wolf-grins, his eyes gleaming with pride, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. He took a perfunctory bite, just a nibble, then nosed it back to her. It was her kill. She deserved it, not him.

Mary panted back, looking around at all of us, her eyes human beneath twitching brows. We all nodded and whimpered in agreement with Peter. This was her first of the season. She could share on the next one.

She tore into it, and all of us, all of her surrogate brothers-slash-uncles, looked on with pride as she ripped meat and sinew from bone, tore fur from flesh, and swallowed her big bites in a rush.

This pack was different from the one I’d first been with. This one respected each other. Frost Security was a unit, not a way to flex our own egos or push our own agendas. We focused on the mission, on the individual cases, on the hunt. On supporting each other.

After Mary finished devouring her fallen prey, we headed back through the woods to the two cars we’d parked off one of the roads. Mary and Peter were in front, blazing the trail, Frank and Matt followed behind, and Richard and I brought up the end.

Even as I trekked back through the snow with them, though, I found myself thinking back to the desert of my youth, of the hot summer days and stark landscape. It was so unlike this place. Sure, both were unforgiving and indifferent. But one wasn’t covered in snow for almost half the year.

And then there were the people, too. A throng of the masses, all pushing and pulling and striving every which way possible. From the wealthiest of the wealthy up in the hills of LA, to the poorest of the poorest of the poor living on Skid Row. Everyone wanted something different, even if it was really the same in the end: acceptance, a chance to live, power over their own lives.

Here, it wasn’t too different, either. That was part of why you moved to the middle of nowhere. To be on your own, to not see a soul. To know that when you hear a noise outside your window, it’s because of a wild animal or just a falling branch. But, still, to have a community when you went into town. Because with just a few thousand people living in the area, you couldn’t be too picky on who your friends were.

Behind a stand of trees where we’d hung our clothes, we all shook our fur free of ice and slush and began to change back. Mary, of course, had her own secluded stand off to the side. The rest of us had all been in the military, though. If you couldn’t handle group showers, you weren’t going to last through even basic.

Shifting was a painful process. The slower you took it, the easier the remolding of muscular and skeletal structures was on your body. I took it slow tonight, not wanting to make myself any more uncomfortable than I was going to be with the colder-than-ice snow that I was in up to my ankles.

The wind changed direction as my pack mates and I began to shift.

And that was when I smelled something. Something like the desert on those hot summer days. Spicy, dry, the scent of flowering succulents as they tried to absorb enough water to last them over months and months of drought.

Before my nose shifted its structure, before my teeth had begun to retract into my jaw, before my ears had begun to shorten and shift around to the sides of my head, I smelled it from somewhere south, from down towards Enchanted Rock.

Pausing my shift, the cold biting into my now naked flesh, I whipped my head that way. I breathed deep, taking in more of that fragrance, and whimpered through half-man and half-wolf vocal cords. Sand, rock, the open vistas and arid wind filled my nose, and pushed away all my other thoughts. Rather than causing my blood to rise, though, something else happened. I began to calm, began to settle into myself. The desire to run, unchecked through the woods, seemed to recede.

“Jake?” Richard asked from behind me. “You okay, man? You stopped shifting.”

The wind shifted again, now blowing away the scent.

I whimpered again, the urge to hunt rising in me. No, I wanted it back!

“Jake?” he asked again.

I turned back to look at him and realized my whole pack was watching me as I sat there like some deformed wolf-creature, hairless, my legs twisted, the pain throbbing through my whole body. Shifters weren’t meant to stay in this form. We were meant to be wolf or man. Nothing more, nothing less.

At least, that’s what Alex had always said.

But I couldn’t help that I’d stopped. That scent had just been too overpowering. Like it had reached in through my nasal cavity, grabbed hold of my brain, and gave it as good a shake as Mary earlier gave to Thumper.

“Wayne?” Peter, already buttoning up his flannel over his thermal underwear, barked like a drill sergeant. “Finish up. Let’s go.”

I whimpered again and nodded, forcing myself to complete the transformation. Before I was done, Peter and Richard had already gone off to start the cars and get them warmed up for the drive home. I scrambled and began to pull on my clothes I’d hung from a low branch before I’d shifted, my feet freezing in the snow. “Sorry, guys,” I mumbled. “I just—I smelled something. When the wind shifted.”

Matt and Frank just exchanged a look, eyebrows raised. “Ain’t smelled like nothing to me, pardner,” Frank said, his words practically dripping with his Texan drawl. “Just pines and spruce, same as everywhere else out here.”

I shook my head and looked at Matt as I shivered in the cold.

“Don’t look at me, Jake,” he said as I pulled on my thermal undershirt. “I didn’t smell fire or anything. Maybe it’s just the cold getting to you? It happens.”

I shrugged and finished buttoning my flannel. Seemed like neither of them would believe me if I’d told them what I’d picked up on the wind. And why should they? Our noses were almost better than our eyes at picking up details. I put my socks and boots back on.

Finally dressed against the cold, I pulled my heavy Carhartt coat on and stomped after Matt and Frank and the rest of my pack. I shook my head again, trying to free the memory of that strange fragrance from my mind. But, try as I might, I still couldn’t get rid of it, even during the hour-long trek back down the highway to the Frost Security office on the edge of Enchanted Rock. It was like an itch at the back of your brain that you just couldn’t scratch.

I jumped out of the back of Peter’s old Bronco when we pulled up to the gravel lot outside the office. I took a deep breath, hoping to catch another whiff of the elusive scent and get some clue, see if it had come from here.

Nothing.

Maybe it had all been in my head?

“Alright, gentlemen,” Peter called from where he was standing beside his Bronco. Mary was still in the passenger seat, buckled up and shivering against the cold even in the heated cab. “See you tomorrow morning, oh-nine-hundred. Bright and early.”

“Roger,” I said as I fished my keys from my pocket and went over to my old Chevy I’d picked up for when my bike was in bad weather storage. “Oh-nine.”

I climbed into the cab of my truck and cranked the engine. It was sluggish at first, but the engine finally turned over on the second try. My mind began to wander as I sat there in the freezing cold, hugging myself to stay warm as the pickup heated and the oil got circulating.

Back when I was on the force, I’d sometimes catch a case and it just wouldn’t let go. A husband clearly murdered in the course of a breaking and entering. A wife forced off the road in a hit-and-run. A man who tried to eat his own gun one bullet at a time. On the surface, they all looked like accidents or suicides. No foul play. But then I’d catch a stray scent that just didn’t belong. Another man’s cologne that I’d smelled on the newly minted widow. A husband who smelled like fresh roses hours after he’d been told of his wife’s death. The smell of too many different kinds of gun lubricant, when there should have been only one on a suicide.

Or the stray scent of flowery succulents in the icy pine forests of the Rocky Mountains.

I was going to find out where that smell had come from. No matter what.