Wolves of the Thousandth Winter novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Hunt
We left the cabin at first light on Sunday, with the duffel on my shoulder and Gunnar a step ahead.
His truck waited at the bridge, half a mile down the trail, where the road gave out.
The snow was packed hard, and the spruce on either side stood black and heavy with white.
Nothing moved in the woods.
That was what bothered me.
A mile from anywhere, there should have been birds.
"Gunnar."
"I know."
He stopped dead and put out an arm.
I felt his whole body change under my hand.
The air thickened with a smell like wet dogs and old iron, and then the trees on both sides of the trail came alive.
They came out of the spruce in silence, gray and brown and black, six of them.
They were the size of ponies, with their ruffs up and their lips peeled.
Every one of them looked at me.
"Run," Gunnar said, very low.
"I'm not leaving..."
"Run to the cabin. The deed line. They won't cross it."
"Gunnar!"
"Thora, go!"
I ran.
I dropped the duffel in the snow and ran up the trail with my coat flapping and my breath sawing.
I heard the sound behind me, a roar that was not a man's, and the crack of something huge hitting the ground.
Then paws drummed after me through the snow.
I looked back once.
Two wolves had slipped past him.
They came up the trail in long, flat strides, low and hungry, and I knew I could not outrun them.
I ran anyway.
My glasses jolted off my nose and swung on the cord.
My lungs burned, and my boots slid in the packed snow.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Wolves of the Thousandth Winter are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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