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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Yet another thank-you to the saet these stories out there: ent, Helen Heller, and my editors, Anne Groell of Bantason of Little, Brown & Co UK

Big thanks as always to , Xaviere Daumarie, Terri Giesbrecht, Laura Stutts, Raina Toorows as the stories do--more eyes to make sure I don't screw up!

PROLOGUE

AS TOM WATCHED the ht reflect off the ice-covered lake, he had a reflection of his own: the world really needed more snow

Sure, people paid lip service to the threat of global war right over in Kenai Fjords But in their hearts, they weren't convinced that a war, especially at this time of year, late March, with harsh o

But To powder When spring thaw ca butcorpses of every beast that hadn't survived the winter For these few h, it was as pristine a wilderness as any poet ine

A field of unbroken white glittered under a half- breathunder the drifts and the howling of wolves ten miles off

Tom liked wolves even more than he liked snow Beautiful, proud creatures Perfect hunters, gliding through the night, silent as ghosts

The first animal he'd ever trapped had been a wolf cub He still re in a halo of blood on the newly fallen snow, lips drawn back in a final snarl of defiance, its leg half chewed off as it had tried to escape Even as a boy, Tom had respected that defiance, that will to survive When his dad had said the pelt was too daed to sell, Tom had asked his mother to make him mitts out of it

He still had those mitts He'd planned to pass them on to his son but well, forty-six wasn't too old yet, but there just weren't enough woe wasn't as bad as Fairbanks, but when you were a trapper with an eighth-grade education, living in a cabin thirty miles froet yourself a wife

Another wolf pack's song joined the first, and as Tom listened, he wondered whether one of those was his pack, the one that used to run in this field For twenty years, he'd been able to count on pelts from them Notcareful to target the old and sick, like a proper scavenger should

He'd hear therip his rifle a little tighter They never bothered hio about his business

He'd see their tracks, crisscrossing through the snow, and he'd find their kills picked clean to the last bone Now and then, he'd even catch a glih the trees Once, on a winter's night just like this, he'd watched the and sliding like puppies

But then, a few months back they'd left this little valley

Now those distant wolf howls stopped, and when they did, Tom realized how quiet it was Unnaturally quiet Folks talked about the silence of the Alaskan wilderness, yet anyone who spent any ti but silent, with the constant rush of wind and running water, the sca of feet over and under the snow, the call of predators and the cries of prey Right now, though, Tom could swear even the wind had stopped

And if you've been out here long enough, you know this, too--that true silence : trouble

Toripping it with both hands like a samurai with his sword Not that Toun made him a warrior Out here he was just another predator, and a pitiful one at that

When a shadow rippled between the trees, he held perfectly still and tracked it by pivoting slowly, his rifle rising a few more inches

The torst mistakes you could make in the forest were coht only a glione

A bear? They rarely bothered with humans outside of cub season And when bears took off, they made a helluva racket, especially when they had just co

The hair on his neck rose as old stories and legends crept through his mind There were parts of this forest you couldn't pay some of the Inuit elders to hunt in This was Ijiraat territory, they'd say, the hunting grounds of shape-shifters who took the forainst all co to frighten the young