Kelley Armstrong - Frostbitten

The tracks were definitely canine, as the young officer had said. While they seemed too big to be wolf. I won't say definitely too big, because wolves have been found weighing up to two hundred pounds. The average, though, is just over half that. These tracks were the size of Clay's, but the scent already told me we were dealing with a werewolf.

The trail was a few days old, the prints remaining only because the tree canopy protected this patch from the freshly fallen snow. I had to pace along it before my brain really latched onto the smell. Then I sat on my haunches and mulled it over, like a wine expert with a cork, trying to place the vintage. When it didn't tweak a memory, I sniffed again. No match to anything in my mental file cabinet.

I glanced at Clay, who was sniffing another section of the trail. He lifted his muzzle from the ground and shook his head-no one he knew either. My dossiers document twenty-five werewolves currently living in the United States, but we weren't arrogant enough to believe that actually meant there were only twenty-five.

Mutts were always immigrating and emigrating, plus there were a handful that stayed under the radar. Keeping tabs on all of them was impossible. We really only tracked the troublemakers and the ones from the oldest werewolf families, like the Santoess and the Cains.

Still, in the Lower 48, we could say with some confidence that we knew most of the werewolves around-either by reputation or by scent. Up here in Alaska, though, we might as well be in another country. The only Alaskans we had in our dossiers were the Stillwells, and if Clay didn't recognize this scent, then it wasn't either of them.

We couldn't follow the trail back to the kill site, but we could take it the other way. We'd tracked it for almost a mile before it ended at a clearing. Inside, we found a piece of plywood and a wooden crate. A werewolf's winter locker-a place to Change in the mud and snow, and to store your gear. We had something similar, if more elegant, at Stonehaven.

This clearing reeked of scent and sweat, meaning someone was using it regularly. As I sniffed more, I realized it was more than someone. We had two distinct scents and possibly a third.

Shit.

Two or more werewolves, none the Stillwells. And as soon as they set foot in this clearing, they'd know there were two werewolves in town, one of them female.

Double shit.

I started backing out of their change-room, but it was too late. The moment I got within ten feet of the spot I'd left a scent that was sure to get their attention. Upon consideration, though, I decided that wasn't necessarily a problem. With the size of Alaska, finding two or three werewolves would be needle-and-haystack work. Now they'd be looking for us, which would make things easier.

As long as we'd already left our scents, we might as well take a better sniff around. We covered every inch of that clearing searching for remnants of the man by the lake, and found not a speck of blood or shred of flesh. That didn't mean much-the long run through the snow would be enough to clean off their feet-but it bore keeping in mind. It could also suggest a deliberate cleaning before returning to this spot. Maybe one of the mutts was a man-eater trying to hide the habit from his buddies.

Once we were sure we'd gotten all the information we could and had committed their scents to memory, we left the clearing. As I stepped out, I caught a movement in the bushes. I froze, blocking Clay. He nudged my hindquarters. I edged backward, scanning the woods. The only noise was the wind rustling dead leaves overhead. It was too quiet. Clay went still, knowing something was wrong.

I kept looking, ears swiveled forward, nose working. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing to smell. Yet the forest stayed deathly silent. Clay nudged me again-now he was worried and wanted to get moving.

I slid from the clearing. Clay followed. We stood in the dense, dimly lit forest, looking, listening, sniffing, catching nothing. Then a bird called. Another answered. A squirrel chirruped and scampered over a branch overhead, dead leaves raining down. I shook one off my head, and I rubbed against Clay, grunting an apology for overreacting. He licked my muzzle and waited for instructions, ready to cede the lead now that any danger had passed.

We found the scent from the werewolves in human form, and followed it. It didn't go more than twenty paces before ending at a trail thick with the stink of mixed gas and oil. Snowmobiles.

I turned around and loped back a quarter mile toward the kill site, but the men hadn't left yet. There was no reason for us to linger. By the time the crew removed the body, all their tracks would have erased the faint trail of the killer. We returned to our truck and Changed back.

AS DISAPPOINTED AS we were over the awkward end to our run, neither of us suggested we crawl into the back of the SUV and finish it properly. We'd already done the quick-and-dirty solution in the airport. Now we wanted more, and if we couldn't get it on our terms, we'd wait and build up an appetite.

Speaking of appetites, breakfast was long overdue. We drove back to Highway 1-the main route through Alaska… or the 5 percent of it that could be reached by car. It was a two-lane highway that didn't bear much resemblance to the interstates I was used to, and it didn't have the facilities I was used to either. Earlier we'd passed only one service center. We returned there now and found a gas station, bakery and pizza parlor.

I was surprised by the neon sign in the bakery window offering espressos-not the kind of thing one expects to find at a highway outpost. But I wasn't arguing. I'd always considered myself a straight coffee person, but when I'd been pregnant and nursing, I drank decaf lattes to up my dairy intake and developed a taste for them, especially if they came with caramel. These ones did, so I got a large, a coffee for Clay and a bag of pastries.

We headed outside to eat and couldn't find a single bench or picnic table. Given the view-snow-covered mountains with the sun cresting the ridge-I couldn't imagine why everyone chose to drink their coffee inside. I suppose the subfreezing temperatures had some thing to do with that.

But the chance to eat with a view like that was too tempting to ignore. And Clay was just as happy not to have to eat with strangers. So we settled onto the wooden ties of a raised flower bed. Then we phoned home.

Jeremy and his visiting girlfriend, Jaime, were getting ready to take the kids to swimming lessons, meaning our timing was perfect-Logan and Kate were too excited about swimming to ask when we were coming back. Clay, Jeremy and I work mostly from home, meaning the kids have grown up with us there all the time, so you'd think they wouldn't mind our occasional absence. But because we're always there, that's what they're used to, and when we take off, they raise a hell of a fuss.

Clay talked to Kate first, which would give me plenty of time to enjoy my latte and muffin. I listened in as she told Daddy everything that had happened since he'd called the day before. Everything. In detail. And through the entire fifteen-minute recitation, Clay's attention never flagged.

When the subject of kids first came up years ago, I'd joked that the only thing I could imagine worse than me as a mother was Clay as a father. I couldn't have been more wrong. Clay was an amazing parent. The guy who couldn't spare a few minutes to hear a mutt's side of the story could listen to his kids talk all day. The guy who couldn't sit still through the a brief council meeting could spend hours building Lego castles with his kids. The guy who solved problems with his fists never even raised his voice to his children. And if sometimes Clay was a little too indulgent, a little too slow to discipline, preferring to leave that to me, I was okay with it. He supported and enforced my decisions and we presented a unified front to our children, and that was all that mattered.