Chapter 1 - The Mark of the FrostThe silence of the northern woods was no longer peaceful; it was suffocating.
Ranger Ethan Vance sat on his wooden porch, his breath blooming into white clouds against the bite of the sub-zero air. His hands were still numb, wrapped tightly around a mug of bitter black coffee that did nothing to warm the ice settled deep in his chest. Just three hours ago, he had dragged a dying, pregnant she-wolf from the frozen depths of Blackwood Lake.
He had saved a life. But as the sun dipped behind the jagged spine of the mountains, dropping the world into blood-red twilight, Ethan felt no satisfaction. He felt a cold, creeping dread.
He looked down at his bloodstained gloves. The wolf’s teeth had nicked his wrists when he pulled her heavy, waterlogged body onto the bank. She had looked into his eyes—not with wild fury, but with something horrifyingly deliberate—before slinking off into the dark tree line, heavy with unborn life.
Then came the first sign that something was horribly wrong.
A sharp, metallic clink echoed across his wooden deck.
Ethan whipped his head around, his hand instinctively reaching for the holster at his hip. There, lying at the edge of his steps, was a heavy steel object coated in fresh mud. He approached slowly, flashlight beam piercing the gloom.
It was a rusted leather collar attached to a heavy tracking device. It had been chewed off and left deliberately on his doorstep.
Ethan bent down to pick it up. As he wiped away the frozen mud, a chill ran down his spine far colder than the winter wind. Engraved on the brass tag was not a wildlife research ID, nor a forest service code.
It was a name. A name that had been buried six feet under the snow three years ago.
"PROPERTY OF AVA VANCE - FACILITY 09"
Ethan dropped the collar as if it were white-hot iron. Ava was his eleven-year-old daughter. The daughter who had supposedly perished alongside his wife in a mysterious cabin fire three winters ago.
May you like
Before he could process the shock, a sound shattered the quiet night—a sound that made his blood run cold. It wasn't the howl of a lone wolf. It was the synchronized, deafening blare of industrial sirens ringing out from deep inside the prohibited zone of the forest, followed by the heavy, rhythmic thud of rotor blades slicing through the sky.
The wolf hadn't fallen into the ice by accident. She was running from something. And by saving her, Ethan had just invited the nightmarish reality of his past right to his front door.
