Chapter One

Chapter One:

“Why is it always so cold here, Katerina!”

A baritone voice spoke from behind me. I turned and looked at my hunting partner and best friend. I had to agree though, I hated the cold. Nick however was a true werewolf; he really did love the snow.

“Stop complaining Nick, you know as well as I do that if the snow ever stopped falling here you would be upset about that, too. We are almost to the lake so start helping me look for caribou tracks.”

Though there were none that I could see, realistically we should have been able to scent them by now. I lifted my face to the cold air and took a long breath in through my nose, tasting the air for any hint that there was even one caribou nearby. Nothing. I frowned a little, there was no reason that I could see that they shouldn’t be here.

Around us the forest lay quiet and still, not surprising as it was so bitterly cold. I pulled my jacket closer around me as I continued across the untouched snow. My people lived in a remote area of the Arctic Circle; a place we had practically been banished to because of who we were. A great place for someone who hated the cold as much I did. I thought to myself sarcastically.

Humans weren’t very accepting of things they couldn’t explain, especially werewolves. It was easier to just live out here than to be around them. The weather may be harsher, and food harder to gather up here but I had to admit that we also had a very distinct advantage, we had an alternate shape to help us with these challenges. Wolves by nature are successful hunters and we as distant cousins shared in that good fortune. Unfortunately, for some reason the caribou were becoming harder to find. We were having to travel further than usual to find the herds. As it was, Nick and I had traveled a good two and a half hours outside our village to a lake that the herds commonly used as a byway as well as water.  

I walked over a small drift and saw the lake below, a few more yards and we would be able to walk across the thick ice. From the small hill I was standing on it opened to an enormous lake, Lake Tuktuit. Generally, this is where the caribou gathered in their thousands, but now it just looked empty and cold. I sniffed the air again, only catching the scents of Nick coming up the hill behind me and an occasional gust of bird scents as one or two flew overhead now and then.

“It doesn’t look like the caribou have been here for a while” he said, also smelling the air. “There aren’t even wolf tracks nearby, wherever the caribou have gone it seems they have followed.”

I nodded and started towards the ice. A bad sign when the carnivores of the area abandoned their home too. But why, I thought, taking the time to look around for any clues that might jump out. Of course, nothing revealed itself and I returned my mind to the task at hand.

“Well, I guess we are trying our hand at fishing then, we can’t go back empty handed. We need the meat.” I said.

I felt more than saw his agreement as he nodded and walked ahead of me before turning and picking a spot a few feet from me. I reached the edge of the lake and took my pack off my shoulders, pulling out a small ice saw. I knelt to pull out the fishing gear and caught my reflection in the clear blue of the ice.

Most of me was bundled up against the cold, but my face was bare. If I didn’t need to rely on my nose for danger and finding food, it too would have been covered. As it was, my nose was a bright red from the bitter cold. A tanned complexion stared back at me, acquired after many years in the sun. Even then though, I still couldn’t help but notice that my complexion was much lighter than the other wolves of the pack. My eyes were almond shaped and as dark as the night sky on a moonless night, another difference from the pack. The majority of their eye color was either blue or a golden brown. A small and somewhat crooked nose sat in the middle of a slightly rounded face with high cheek bones and was framed by long black hair when not tucked under a hood. I stared at myself a moment longer before beginning to assemble the rough, homemade fishing pole. Generally, if we couldn’t find caribou, we would go to the edge of the ocean shore to try trapping seals, but because we had traveled to the lake to find the caribou we had practically gone in the opposite direction. Already the sun had begun its afternoon decent, and I had no doubt we would be traveling back in the dark. There was no way I was going to traipse across this deep snow to the other side. I may be a werewolf, but I still didn’t particularly like the dark whether Nick was with me or not. Call me a coward, but the dark had the potential to hide many things. Things I didn’t want to encounter anytime soon. Superstitious me? Absolutely.

I watched as Nick began his pole assembly. His dark brown hair ruffled in the light breeze and his face held a total look of concentration, with striking blue eyes that focused on the task at hand. He had a short strong nose with a matching jaw and chin. His complexion was also a nice tan. At a towering six foot one, he was one of the biggest in our pack. He was also one of the strongest. His opinions held a lot of weight withing the pack, of course it also didn’t hurt that his father was our Alpha, Galan.

 Nick’s parents had taken me in after my parents had died and raised me alongside Nick. Naturally, we were close. Galan and Nick’s mother, Eska, had raised me with the same love and comfort they did with Nick. I was never left out or abandoned, never forgotten on my birthday. Yet, I always seemed to feel out of place, like I never quite fit in there with the rest of the pack. The pack, too, never treated me terribly I just always felt different. Nick never let me feel that way though, he always found a way to distract me from my thoughts, he was just that kind of man.  

Many of the pack believed we should have ended up together in fact, his father had hinted at it once or twice to my knowledge. While I wouldn’t have minded the idea, I just didn’t believe Nick had those types of feelings for me, he never seemed to respond to these comments. I harbored a few though. I respected his feelings of course but that didn’t mean I didn’t care if he did take a love interest elsewhere. A picture of Nick with his hands on another flashed through my mind and a strong feeling of jealousy filled me for an instant. I frowned a little at the thought and went back to my task.

Stop it, Kyana. You know it will never happen, stop dwelling on it!

Over the years, I witnessed Nick take many different women to his bed and had worked very hard not to let on that it hurt each time. I truly did want Nick to be happy, wherever his love interests fell, but I couldn’t help still holding on to the small hope that it could be with me…

“Kat.”

Nicks voice was low, and I was suddenly uneasy. I looked up at Nick and followed the direction of his extended arm. There across the expanse of ice, a dark figure was walking towards us. I stood and walked over, stopping near enough to feel the heat of his body through my layers of clothing. Instantly, my body seemed to react, and I mentally pushed it aside. Seriously, stop it!  It was probably because I had been going through a bit of a dry spell, normally these thoughts and feelings didn’t hit me so hard, but I hadn’t been seeing anyone else lately. After the last guy I was with, I kind of decided I needed a break from anything relationship wise.

“There shouldn’t be anybody else out here with us. Nobody else from the pack said they were coming out here, did they?” He asked, still watching the figure closely.

I shook my head no and tried to listen for any sounds from the stranger. We stood together and watched the figure approach, on high alert and our senses on guard. The last time a stranger was encountered by one of us, our pack suffered for it. That story was told almost at every village gathering, as if to help remind us just how dangerous humans really were. Humans just didn’t like what they didn’t understand. We may have longer than average lifespans, and it may take a little more effort to cause us serious harm, but we weren’t invincible.

The breeze swirled across the ice, finally bringing us the scent of this stranger with it. He smelled of Cedar and woodsmoke, all male and all wolf. I took a small relief that he wasn’t human but was quickly reminded that another unknown werewolf was an even more deadly enemy to have. Nick had caught his scent too and stiffened beside me. Being another male, it was instinctive of him to be wary and even aggressive to this new presence. Another trait we shared with our animal cousins. Of course, werewolf or not, men in general seemed to always see each other as a potential threat to their own ego and pride.

The soft sound of his boots hit the ice and rang as loud as gunshots across the frozen expanse. As his presence came into better view, I could see that he was bundled under a thick fur coat, probably made from the hide of a moose. What hair was visible, was a dark black.  He stopped a few feet from us, and he looked right at me. His eyes were a golden color, warm and inviting. His face was a lighter shade of tan, his lips full and widened into a heart stopping smile. I instantly imagined what those lips could do, pressed against my skin. This man was a 10/10 and I hadn’t even seen what was under the bundle of warm clothing.

“Who are you and why are you here?” Nick asked gruffly, shaking me from my mini daydream.

The stranger shifted his gaze from mine, looking at Nick inquisitively before turning his gaze back to me. Finally, he spoke,

“My name is Kian. I was separated from my pack a few days ago as we were moving to different hunting grounds. I saw the smoke rising and followed it.”

He pointed behind us. His voice was seductive and matched the rest of him. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the smoke. Given the time of day, the fires were probably started for not only heat, but to prepare dinner as well. I looked back at Kian and saw that once again he was looking at me. I blushed a little and tried to hide it by wiping my face with a gloved hand.

“How does someone as beautiful as you live out here in such isolation?” Completely ignoring Nick, Kian walked closer to me as he asked this. “We are looking for the caribou to feed our pack, but they seem to have disappeared.” I answered, thinking that that couldn’t have been too bad of an answer.

I didn’t give anything away but the obvious. Nick edged closer to me, trying to put himself between me and Kian, being the protective man.

“My pack too have been looking for the caribou”, he answered, “We know why they left, just not where.”

I started, “Why did they leave?” I blurted; my interest peaked. Nick shot a look at me; I knew he was instantly upset for engaging in this stranger’s conversation. But maybe this stranger knew something we didn’t, and I wasn’t about to not find out.

“They left because Lycaon has returned.”