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It was a desperate, fleeting hope. The blood was real. The stench of it coated his nostrils and the back of his tongue like thick oil, making him want to heave. The death all around him was real.

Teddy sank to his knees in the snow. He sobbed, unable to contain his shock and grief. He howled and punched the frozen earth, despair engulfing him.

He didn’t hear the approaching footsteps. They’d been too light, as stealthy as a cat. But in the next instant, Teddy knew he wasn’t alone.

And he knew, even before he turned his head and saw the burning glow of a predator’s wild eyes, that he was about to join his kin in death.

Teddy Toms screamed, but the sound never made it past his throat.

CHAPTER

One

Twenty-eight-hundred feet below the red single-engine de Havilland Beaver’s wings, the broad swath of the frozen Koyukuk River glistened under the morning moonlight like a ribbon of crushed diamonds. Alexandra Maguire followed the long stretch of ice-jammed, crystalline water north out of the small town of Harmony, the back of her plane loaded with supplies for the day’s delivery run to a handful of settlements nestled deep in the interior.

Beside her in the passenger seat of the cockpit was Luna, the best copilot she’d ever had, aside from her dad, who had taught Alex everything she knew about flying. The gray-and-white wolf dog had been standing in for Hank Maguire for a couple of years now, when the Alzheimer’s had really started taking hold of him. Hard to believe he’d been gone for six months now, although Alex often felt she had been slowly losing him for a lot longer than that. At least the disease that ate away his mind and memories had also ended his pain, a small mercy to be sure.

Now it was just Luna and her living in the old house in Harmony and making the supply runs to Hank’s small roster of clients in the bush. Luna sat erect next to Alex, her pointed ears perked forward, sharp blue eyes keeping a steady watch on the mountainous terrain of the Brooks Range, its dark, crouching bulk filling the northwest horizon. As they crossed the Arctic Circle, the dog fidgeted in the seat and let out a small, eager-sounding whine.

“Don’t tell me you can smell Pop Toms’s moose jerky from here,” Alex said, reaching out to ruffle the big furry head as they continued north along the Koyukuk’s Middle Fork, past the small villages of Bettles and Evansville. “Breakfast is still twenty minutes away, girlfriend. Make that thirty minutes, if that black storm cloud over the Anaktuvuk Pass decides to blow our way.”

Alex eyed the dark thunderhead that loomed a few miles up from their flight path. More snow was in the forecast; certainly nothing unusual for November in Alaska, but not exactly prime conditions for her delivery route today. She exhaled a curse as the wind coming off the mountains picked up speed and scuttled across the river valley to give the already bumpy ride a bit more gusto.

The worst of it passed just as Alex’s cell phone began to chirp in the pocket of her parka. She dug the phone out and answered the call without needing to know who was on the other end of the line.

“Hey Jenna.”

In the background of her best friend’s house, Alex could hear a Forest Service radio chattering about sketchy weather conditions and plummeting windchill factors. “Storm’s gonna be coming your way in a couple of hours, Alex. You on the ground yet?”

“Not quite.” She rode through another round of bumps as she neared the town of Wiseman and turned the plane onto the route that would take her to the first stop on her day’s delivery schedule. “I’m maybe ten minutes from the Toms place now. Three more stops after that, shouldn’t take more than an hour apiece even with the headwind I’m fighting right now. I think the storm is going to pass right by this time.”

It was hope more than qualified estimation, sympathy for her friend’s concern more than caution for her own safety. Alex was a good flier, and too well trained by Hank Maguire to do anything completely reckless, but the simple fact was the