“Wait, who? Who is he?” Javier looked over at the pile of what looked like furs that Keva had dropped in the snow.

  “He,” Michelle said with disgust, “was our gracious host for the past week or so. And by host, I mean our kidnapper. And by gracious, I mean that he starved us for the past week and wanted to turn me and Keva into weird brood mothers for his imaginary family that he doesn’t have…yet.”

  Javier took a few minutes to process what he had just heard. He had known that Erato was dead, there was no other explanation of why he couldn’t feel her when he woke up in Yrsa’s house. But to hear that she had been killed just because some asshole had wanted to break and enslave his pack was just something he could not understand or bring himself to accept.

  He began stalking over to the heap in the snow.

  “Javier!” Keva said forcefully.

  The Enforcer almost didn’t turn around. He did stop and felt a very firm hand grab his shoulder and spin him around in the snow. With him wearing snow shoes he could have twisted an ankle but he was spun around and found himself looking down into the firm green eyes of his Alpha.

  “I know how you feel,” Keva glanced around him at Paley lying face down in the snow. “I wanted to kill him myself. If I hadn’t been in chains, I would have ripped his throat out without a second thought. But we have to be better than that. We have to bring him to justice of some kind. We are here for a reason, and if we have any chance at getting these people to help us, we have to err on the side of them taking care of their own. We cannot be seen as murders and expect to get anywhere. Do you understand me?”

  Javier worked his jaw. He had worked hard over the past week to get Yrsa to see him as something other than a monster. The murder of one of her people would erase all that hard work, regardless of what this guy had done to them. Keva was right. There had to be some kind of justice in this part of the world and they would see that this man got his, whatever it was.

  He looked at Keva and Michelle, “Ok, you’re right. I won’t do anything. I brought a friend who might help. She’s a bit squeamish about our werewolf forms so I brought you guys these.” Javier unslung two spare sets of snow shoes and gave them to the two women. “Yrsa!” He called back over the drift he had come from, “It’s alright, come meet my friends.”

  Keva looked over the rise that Javier had come over and saw a really tall, broad-shouldered woman. Her long straight blonde hair swept back behind her was sprinkled with snow. Her cool blue eyes looked over the three humans but lingered long and hard on the two wolves.

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  She made her way over to Javier, “You all Shape shifters too?” She asked not unkindly.

  Javier nodded, “Yes, this is Keva my pack Alpha, Michelle,” both women nodded and Michelle smiled warmly at the newcomer. “While those two are Hysminai and Soter, Soter’s the one with silver stripes, Hysminai has the black stripes.”

  Yrsa looked over at the two beasts like they were going to attack her at any moment. She was tense, even though Javier could sense that she was trying to relax, being this close to honest to God monsters from legend would be unsettling to anyone.

  “I assume that he is one of your people,” Keva said while hooking a thumb over her shoulder at Paley. “That man kidnapped us, held us against our will, starved us, and killed one of my wolves. Do you have any sort of law out here? A Sherriff or Mayor or anyone?”

  Yrsa almost laughed at the notion, “A Sherriff? Um, no we don’t have Sherriff, not this far north.” She looked over at the man still face down in the snow. She grew very quiet looking at him, “where did he come from?”

  Keva replied, “Back that way,” she pointed along their deep trail in the snow. “His cabin is a long ways that way. Why?”

  Yrsa licked her lips and shook her head, “It’s nothing…nothing.”

  In the past week she had been forced to realize that monsters were real, and sometimes monsters were not the blood thirsty out of control nightmares that she had grown up listening to stories about. If anything, sometimes monsters could be fairly attractive and well mannered. She was not ten feet away from demons that killed and maimed humans and killed livestock with reckless abandon. And now she was also forced to stare down the fact that sometime stories were more than just stories. The man lying face down in the snow could be proof that there were dark and horrible things living this far north. This is why she had felt such dread while they were traveling here. The wild beasts that looked human in the far northland were real. That man was proof of that.

  “We have to go,” Yrsa said quietly as she moved to Paley.

  “Wait, what? What do you mean?” Michelle asked.

  Soter and Hysminai raised their heads simultaneously and growled low in their throats as they stood up and faced outward. Yrsa ran toward the unconscious man and picked him up, throwing him over her shoulder. She moved with fluid speed back towards the group.

  “No time, we must go now! Get snow shoes on, move!” Yrsa didn’t wait but moved up to the top of the snow drift and looked around their position with a focused concerned look.

  Javier helped the two girls put on their snow shoes and moved up the snow drift to join Yrsa. The two wolves were still growling and not moving.

  “Hysminai, Soter!” Keva called sternly, “This is not the time for this. Move!”

  Yrsa slid down the back side of the drift the way she and Javier had come while the wolves looked at each other before turning and running up to meet their Alpha. Javier helped Michelle down the back side of the slope to join Yrsa. The two wolves bounded over and through the snow drift to move ahead of the group. Keva took a last look over her shoulder before heading down. She squinted hard into the deep shadows of the forest. Was that movement? The shadows shifted and moved but she wasn’t that interested to find out what it was. She jumped down and skidded down the drift.

  She heard a solid thud from above her as she was sliding down the drift. She looked up and saw a slender object jutting out from the tree that she was just leaning against. The black wood arrow shaft told her everything she needed to know.