CHAPTER 1 – The Rescue That Should Never Have Happened
The first scratch came at exactly 2:17 a.m.
Slow.
Heavy.
Deliberate.
Nathan Carter sat upright in bed, every muscle locked.
Scratch...
Scratch...
Scratch...
It wasn't the frantic scratching of a lost dog.
It sounded like claws slowly dragging across old wood.
Outside, the snowstorm had swallowed the entire forest.
Nathan reached for his rifle.
For twenty years he had worked alone as a forest ranger in northern Montana, and one rule had kept him alive:
If something comes to your cabin in the middle of the night... don't open the door.
Another scrape echoed through the silence.
Then...
A low wolf howl.
Nathan's blood turned cold.
Three nights earlier, he had saved a pregnant she-wolf from drowning beneath the frozen lake.
Everyone in town had called him insane.
"You should've let nature decide," the sheriff warned.
"Wolves never forget people," an old hunter whispered.
Nathan ignored them.
He remembered the animal's terrified eyes.
She had been seconds from death.
After dragging her onto solid ice, he'd expected her to attack.
Instead...
She simply looked at him.
Not with hatred.
Not with fear.
Almost...
With recognition.
She staggered away into the trees.
Nathan assumed he'd never see her again.
He was wrong.
Very wrong.
The scratching stopped.
Silence filled the cabin.
Nathan slowly approached the window.
Nothing.
Only darkness.
He cracked the curtain open—
His heart nearly exploded.
Six glowing yellow eyes stared back at him.
Not one wolf.
Three.
Standing perfectly still.
Watching the cabin.
Watching...
Him.
Then, without making a sound, they disappeared into the forest.
Nathan barely slept.
At sunrise he stepped outside.
Fresh wolf tracks surrounded the entire cabin.
Not random tracks.
They formed a perfect circle.
As though the wolves had spent the entire night guarding...
Or trapping...
His home.
Later that afternoon he returned to the frozen lake to investigate.
Near the shoreline he found blood.
Not animal blood.
Human blood.
Boot prints.
Signs of a struggle.
And buried in the snow...
A torn backpack belonging to sixteen-year-old Tyler Mason.
The teenager who had gone missing two days earlier.
Nathan radioed for help.
Search teams arrived within hours.
Everyone assumed the wolves had killed the boy.
But Nathan wasn't convinced.
The tracks told a different story.
The wolves hadn't chased Tyler.
They had been chasing...
Someone else.
That night, the scratching returned.
Only this time...
It wasn't coming from outside.
May you like
It was coming...
From underneath the cabin.
