Chapter 4

Of all things, the distress signal my brother had taught me ended up on the big screen as party footage.

That afternoon, while Violet was trying on her party dress, Lucy snuck into the isolation room to see me. She told me Finn had been dragged out and tortured again that morning. When they brought him back, he huddled by the window of the storage building, shaking all over at the slightest sound outside.

"I want to get him out of here." She clutched a ring of keys, her knuckles white. "But I can only open the kitchen and the isolation room. The lock on the storage building is silver. If I touch it, I'll get burned. And there are guards posted all around the main gate."

I touched the old scar on her hand with my paw, and my eyes landed on her loose, worn sleeve.

My brother once told me that if a howl couldn't carry far enough, I should leave three claw marks. The first meant I'd been there, the second meant I was badly hurt, and the third meant I was still waiting to be rescued. Back then, I only half understood, but I practiced all summer, and every wooden door in our house ended up covered in my crooked scratches.

I pulled a loose tuft of white fur from my tail and pushed it into Lucy's hand, then traced three faint lines across her palm with my claw. I was too weak to even break the skin, but she studied them intently.

"Get this outside the lodge, right?"

I nudged her palm with my nose to say yes.

She hid the white fur in her sleeve, picked up an empty water bucket, and pretended to be working as she headed for the back door. Through the glass of the isolation room, I saw Dylan burst around the corner of the hallway and grab her by the wrist.

"What are you hiding in your sleeve?"

Lucy struggled and said it was just animal fur that got on her while she was cleaning the cages. Dylan pinched up that tuft of silvery white fur and sneered at the nerve of a servant trying to sneak a message out. He told the bodyguards to lock Lucy in the staff quarters downstairs, and added, "Isn't she always going on about that useless brother of hers? Then neither of them gets to see the other."

I threw myself against the glass pen and pounded it with my paws until they hurt. Dylan left without looking back.

Now the only one who could save Finn was me.

That evening, Violet sent someone to groom my fur. Water seeped into the cuts from the silver chain, and the pain came in waves. But she didn't care how ugly the blood looked. She just had them cover the wounds with a wide satin ribbon so they wouldn't spoil the view.

All the filming equipment in the main hall was set up, and she wanted me to do a practice lap on stage first. While the handler was changing the water, I kicked the water bowl into a light stand. The bulb burst with a bang, the big projection screen went black, and every guard's attention snapped toward it. I squeezed between the table legs, ran into the hallway next to the kitchen, and came within inches of the side door that led to the woods.

The wind blew in through the crack in the door, and I smelled that familiar pine.

Once I was out that door, I could find my way back to Silver Moon Valley, wolf spirit or not.

But right at that moment, I heard a faint tapping.

Through the grimy glass window of the storage building, a skinny little gray wolf was clinging to the windowsill, his eyes wide with terror. His legs were even thinner than mine, and he had a heavy silver lock around his neck. The moment he saw me, he shrank back. Only after he was sure I wasn't going to attack did he shakily press his nose to the glass.

It was Finn.

I looked at the side door, so close I could almost touch it, then looked at the helpless little wolf behind the glass. In the end, I turned and threw myself at the lock on the storage building, chewing as hard as I could at the leather strap around it.

"Over here!"

A bodyguard's shadow fell over me. Someone grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and slammed me onto the hallway floor. Pain stole my breath. Then I heard someone give an order. "Move that little thing in the storage building to the old mine. Ship it out tonight."

Two workers pushed over a sealed shipping crate with a faded old mine logo printed on it. I stared hard at that logo and burned it into my memory.

Violet rushed over. When she saw the broken lights and the stage carpet soaked with water, she threatened to dock every worker's pay for the month. She jabbed a catch pole at me and called me an ungrateful little thing.

I gave up on running for the side door. While the workers were setting the cameras back up, I reached out and carved three deep claw marks into the edge of the wooden stage. I pressed so hard the tips of my claws split.

I didn't know if anyone would see those marks.

What happened after that, I only pieced together later when Sierra pulled up the footage and showed me.

After my dad found the blood by the stream, Sierra quickly learned that Black Pine vehicles had crossed the territory marker. She pulled the flight logs for every helicopter in the area. The three SUVs, the takeoff time, and the lodge's public announcement of a private party that night all lined up. My brother got the satellite call at the wildfire rescue site, handed off his rescue work, and rushed back to the Rockies without stopping.

Nolan got an angry call from Sierra.

"Did Black Pine take a white wolf pup?" my sister asked over the phone. "I want an answer right now."

"You've got the wrong place," Nolan said flatly. "We did catch a dog, and we're passing it along tomorrow. Don't ruin the friendship between our two packs over some wild animal."

Sierra didn't argue with him. She quietly saved the recording of the call and sent it to Ethan, along with the helicopter photos and the promotional video the lodge had just posted.

In the video, I was fleeing as the silver chain dragged at my neck, then doubling back to the stage to leave three crooked claw marks in the wood.

And at that very moment, I was curled up in the isolation cage, thinking no one in the world would ever understand my call for help.