CHAPTER ONE
Three days in fur, and her scent was still in the rocks.
Jackson moved through the gray pre-dawn at a lope, the territory rolling under his paws with the unconscious ease of an animal that had walked this ground ten thousand times.
The northern survey route. Claire's route.
The one she'd walked four months ago on the third day of her first contract, tablet glowing, boots the wrong kind for the terrain, one hand pressed flat against a rock he had been trying not to remember.
He was trying to remember it now. That was the problem.
The data, the wolf wanted. Run it in fur. The man's senses miss things.
So he ran it in fur. Pine duff held her. Trail dust held her. The cold wet face of the rock where she'd crouched still held her, four months on, when four months should have scrubbed her out of the land entirely.
Something about the ground had kept her.
He stopped at the place where she'd stood that first morning.
Knew the spot before he could think why — a flat slab of stone at the edge of a small clearing, looking east toward the deeper interior.
She stayed there for ninety seconds. No samples.
Stood very still with her hand on the stone, and Jackson had been thirty yards uphill in the trees with binoculars he hadn't needed, watching her go still in a way he hadn't, at the time, understood.
He understood it now. The understanding had a metal taste.
Pale fur against pine bark. He'd never gotten used to that.
His coat was white. Not silver, not gray. The white that announced itself in a forest, that made his decision to head pack security somewhat ironic to anyone who knew the biology, that meant he didn't patrol in fur in daylight unless he wanted to be seen. He didn't, generally, want to be seen.
He'd wanted to be seen four months ago, on a survey ridge, when a woman with steady hands crouched at a dark rock ledge and went still. Every instinct of cover and camouflage had gone quiet under the single stupid urge to walk into the open.
He hadn't allowed it. Told himself it was a security decision.
He moved on. Told himself this run was a refresh of the paths, an audit of likely reroutes of the terrain she'd be walking again within the week.
Liar, the wolf said. Pleased about it.
He didn't bother arguing.
Three days, the wolf said. Then her.
He didn't let him finish the thought.
The light was coming up. Four hours out and nothing in him was tired. The tired wouldn't arrive until she stepped out of a truck on a survey access road and probably not even then. The tiredness never came. It sat in him the way the cold sat under his paws.
He came to the spot she'd stood at last time, looking east. He'd returned to it after two days running. He returned to it now.
He finally shifted.
The cold hit him the way it hits a man who's been in fur too long. A sharp sting to the skin that meant he hadn't given his body proper transitions. He stood naked on the slab of stone. His clothes were three miles back, in a waterproof bag under a deadfall. He didn't move toward them.
His hands were shaking but not from the cold. The cold was an accessory.
He stood there until they stopped.
Then he walked back through his own territory in human form, naked, until he reached the deadfall and the bag he kept there, and dressed in the half-light. Drove home in the dark. The wolf was quiet on the drive. Calm, not gone. He'd been given his three days, and he was settling into the wait.
Jackson wasn't settling into anything.
He pulled into the driveway at 0623 and sat in the cab a long time before he opened the door.
Three days.
He didn't let himself finish that one either.
* * *