Winter was closing in, and Constance knew the cabin wouldn’t survive another season without help. She’d tried everything—planting more than the land could hold, bartering with neighbors who had little to spare, working until her hands bled—but it wasn’t enough. Not for her, not for Abby, not for the empty fields that stretched like a promise of failure. So when Brooks appeared on her porch, bleeding and barely conscious, she didn’t think twice.
She dragged him inside, her daughter watching with wide eyes from the corner, and she did what she had to do. The bullets came out clean. The wound was ugly, but it would heal. And then she saw them—two tiny wolves curled against his chest, clinging to him like he was the only safe place in the world.
They should have been terrified. They should have been snarling. Instead, they pressed into him, shivering, hiding their faces in the crook of his neck as though they belonged there. “Not all of them, sweetheart,” she told Abby, who was already creeping closer, her small hand outstretched.
“Some of them are just lost. ”
Brooks woke on the second day. He looked at her with eyes that weren’t quite human, and he didn’t try to explain. He just said, “Thank you for holding them,” and then he was quiet again.
The wolves stayed. They grew. They followed Brooks everywhere, and they followed Abby too, tumbling over each other to be near her, huffing with indignation when she petted one before the other. They were a strange little family, and Constance found herself falling into it without meaning to.
Then Duke came home. He was drunk before noon, which was nothing new. He started in on her the way he always did, the words sharp and familiar, and she stood there and took it because she’d learned that fighting back only made it worse. But the wolves didn’t know that.
They moved before she could stop them, one on either side of her, their small bodies rigid with something that wasn’t puppy play. Duke laughed. He called them pests. He made the mistake of stepping toward her.
The larger wolf hit him so hard that Duke flew through the open door, off the porch, and into the mud. Brooks stood in the doorway with gold eyes and a voice that wasn’t quite his own, and Constance saw the truth for the first time—saw the man she’d pulled from the dirt, the man who had healed too fast, the man who had looked at her like she was something worth protecting. “Get out,” Brooks said. “And don’t come back.
”
Duke left. Constance watched him go, and she didn’t feel the relief she expected. She felt something else, something colder, because she knew Duke wasn’t the kind of man who let things go. The sheriff came the next day.
Isaiah, her husband’s brother, with a rifle in his hand and a story about a wounded man who had escaped a pack. He said the wolves were dangerous. He said Brooks was dangerous. He said he was there to take the boys back to their father.
“Their father is dead,” Brooks said. Isaiah’s eyes went hard. “My brother is dead because of you. ”
“No,” Brooks said, his voice low and steady.
“Your brother is dead because he killed their mother. He was going to sell them. I got them out. ”
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crack stone.
Isaiah stared at the boys—the two small wolves huddled together in the corner, watching him with fearful eyes—and Constance saw something move behind his face. “They’re all that’s left,” Isaiah said finally. “Of my family. ”
“Your family is dead,” Brooks said.
“But these boys aren’t. And they’re not going back to the man who tried to sell them. ”
Isaiah raised the rifle. Constance stepped in front of Brooks without thinking, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“You won’t,” she said. Isaiah’s finger twitched on the trigger. Then he looked at the boys again, and he lowered the weapon. “You’re going to keep them safe?
” he asked. “With everything I have,” Brooks said. Isaiah was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned and walked out the door without another word.
The boys came out from the corner, their small bodies pressed against Brooks’s legs. Abby knelt in front of them, and they went to her like it was the most natural thing in the world. Constance looked at Brooks—at the man she’d saved, the man who had saved her in return without even trying—and she knew she wasn’t going to let him go. Winter was coming.
But for the first time in years, she wasn’t afraid of it.
