The pre-dawn forest was a wonderland of freshly fallen snow. The spruces stood tall and black against the sky, and the complete stillness was disturbed only occasionally by a Raven’s caw, or the sound of a twig breaking with the weight of the snow. My breath formed ice crystals on the fur rimming my hood.

In the pale light, for the first time since I moved into Durango Falls, I saw their tracks. I crouched down to study them. Wolves! Big ones.

In an instant their paw prints changed everything. I was no longer a soldier so sick with what I had witnessed I had to hide at the edge of some godforsaken town. I was suddenly taken back in time, a century back. I was standing in the land of the men who had come in covered wagons, the settlers and explorers, of the old West.

If their lurid tales of killer predators were to be believed, I was looking at a short, unequal scuffle on the snow before it was all over. My bones would become part of the forest, and no one would know better. They’d just think I’d packed up, and gone back to wherever I had come from.

As I hiked along the tree line I realized I was being watched … stalked. A lone, dark shadow was moving slowly along the frozen ground. Without warning the shadow broke from cover.

A huge midnight-black timber wolf.

His hide gleamed in the pale light. He headed towards me, running with the loping, loose-jointed grace of his kind.

I stopped, slipped off my pack and waited. My breath came in quick, shallow gasps. A hundred yards away he stopped, raised his head, and tried to get my wind. The air was still, so he wove through the trees, then stopped again, and looked at me.

The great beast was close enough for me to see his eyes: bright yellow and penetrating. He stood tense and alert, but made neither movement nor sound. We stood watching each other. It was weird, but I felt as if I knew him. From another lifetime. Or another realm.

I saw him for what he was: a guardian of the land. He had a timeless understanding of the mountain, the forest, the land, and the seasons. It was the kind of intelligence that was rare even for some humans.

Humans thought fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise, but without wolves, the unchecked deer population will eat a mountain into barren ground, a lush prairie into a dust bowl.

There was a cracking sound in the woods, and the black beast whirled away, and disappeared soundlessly into the shadows. From that moment on I knew I would be staying for good. I had some money saved so I bought Old Man’s Creek, which of course, turned out to be the best decision I ever made. If I hadn’t stayed, Adam would have died.

Adam was my first.

That was the year the bears had woken up early and the berries were late. They were hungry. If you left a bowl of fruit out where it could be seen through a window, a bear would come fucking crashing through your walls as if wood logs were nothing more than cardboard. I almost had to put a couple of rounds into a black bear that year, they were so aggressive.

Adam was only a pup then. He couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old. Badly mauled by a bear, abandoned by his pack (yeah, the animal world is nearly as cruel as ours), and barely able to drag his mangled bloody body, he miraculously made it all the way to my backyard.

He was damn near dead when I carried him back in. I put him on a bit of blanket on my kitchen floor, and he looked into my eyes. I knew then he had no fight left in him. He was ready to die. In his dim stare there was no anger, violence, or even a clawing desire to hang on. There was only an acceptance of his impending demise.

In a strange way it was like looking at a deeper, wiser portion of my own soul. That part of me that knew. Nothing was permanent. All must wither away and die.

Fuck withering away and dying. He was only a pup. I’d be damned before I let him die on me. Back then I didn’t know much about wolves, and the roads were so bad I couldn’t even rush him to a vet, but I knew how to wash a cut and bandage a limb. Hell, I had more experience with that than I cared to remember. I made a teat out of a plastic bag and dripped warm milk into his mouth.

It didn’t take long to gain his trust.

Over the next few weeks I nursed him back to health, or what I thought was pretty close to it. Angry scars covered his back and side, and one of his legs never worked right again even though I was sure it wasn’t broken. In spite of that I watched him grow stronger and bolder day by day.

He began to wander further and further away from the house. I was certain by the time the spring winds came, he would vanish. Instead, he started sleeping on the porch. When he came up the stairs, jumped on my bed, and washed my face with enough saliva to wet a cat, I knew he would stay.

I named him Adam because he was first, but others would come after him. As they have. One by one they joined the tribe and I’ve named each one. It’s important to me to get to know all of them. They are my family. In fact, they are the only company I keep these days.

Until today, when I spoke to Lara Young.

She had a sweet voice. Musical. I could almost imagine her laughing. She sounded young too. Almost childlike. And yet she had enough sass to burn down a house. I don’t carry a white stick around for fun.

Ha, ha. I smiled. I used to like them fiery. Once, when I was still a man looking for a woman. My mind wandered off to what she looked like, and then pulled myself up short. What the fuck was I thinking of? I didn’t want a woman. I certainly didn’t want a relationship. I knew only too well what humans were capable of. Lies. Deceit. Murder. Corruption. Manipulation. Greed. Cruelty.

The list was endless.

The people I trusted could be counted on one hand.

Why? Why did I put that job advert up? Who the fuck really knows?

I was dreaming of a time past when my mother read to me.

I was lonely.

I wanted to look at a woman who could not see me staring at her.

I wanted to be with another human being who could not see my scars.

I wanted to hear a woman’s voice in my empty house.

Maybe I wanted to know if I could still act like a normal man around a woman after living for years with only wolves for company.

I thought of old Andak wandering around the fields out back – he was one of my oldest wolves, probably the wisest. He was also almost blind. How carefully he moves along the fencerow, letting his nose do most of the work. His sense of smell was so heightened he was sharper than wolves much fitter and younger than him.

I thought of Lara Young. What would she sense with her heightened awareness?