A press conference. A large room filled with reporters, cameras and flashing bulbs. A small white wolfwalks across the stage to the podium, adjusts her glasses, andbegins to speak.

"I've been asked to read a short statement. 'As you know, Iamnot the creator of the Care Bears. Patient Heart Wolf here is my only creation, so if you could find it in your heart not to sue a very broke 25 year old, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.' And now, if there are no questions, on with the story."

Wolf in the Family

Prologue

Squinting against the incessant onslaught of snowflakes blurring his vision, Beastly pumped as hard as he could on the pedals of his helicopter. The impish little henchman was on a mission, and as far as he was concerned, the sooner he completed it, the better. I'd better be off castle cleaning duty for at least a week after this. He thought.

With one arm keeping his aircraft steady against the supernatural gusts of wind, he fished his binoculars out from his cluttered sidecar and searched the ground below. He still couldn't believe what he was looking for. "A bunch of pure white wolves in the middle of a snowstorm? I swear, if he hadn't been so excited about it, I'd think No Heart was just trying to get rid of me!" he whined.As another hour passed finding nothing but pine trees and snowdrifts, he felt more and more sure of that. Beastly searched and searched, intent on finding some evidence of wolves that would be his ticket out of the blizzard. He looked so hard, in fact, that he didn't notice the ground getting closer and closer…

Nearby, a small pack of wolves marched through the frozen forest. All of a sudden, the leader stopped in his tracks.

"What is it, Kuma?" asked his mate.

"Did you hear something just now?" Kuma asked, looking around suspiciously. "It sounded like a crash of some sort."

"Probably just the trees. Between the cold and the wind, I'm surprised we haven't heard it more."

"I don't know, Nika." Kuma said, a cautious tone in his voice. "It didn't sound like any tree I've ever heard. But you're right; it's probably nothing. Let's keep going."

They soon came to the edge of the forest, where an old wooden fence marked off a large patch of flat, treeless land. Now every wolf knows that fences mean humans, and that humans usually mean trouble. However, this human seemed to know Kuma's pack could not find winter shelter, and they had rarely found food for themselves. In a move the wolves found incredibly uncharacteristic of a human, the farmer had been leaving several bowls of food in one of the empty barns. Under the circumstances, Kuma and the others had no choice but to take a chance on him.

Kuma was the first to speak upon reaching the fence itself. "It's a good thing this human has no animals, or he most certainly wouldn't let us in here, much less feed us."

"Oh, you worry too much, Kuma!" Nika chuckled. You've gotta be patient with the humans. Some are bad, yes. But some, as you can see—she nodded toward the brightly lit farmhouse—aren't so bad at all."

Kuma laughed. "I tell you, where did I ever find such an easygoing mate?"

As they crossed the fence, Nika was the first to notice what had caused the noise earlier—a strange new machine sat in the middle of the human's yard. Nose in the snow and crumpled like an accordion, it looked so damaged that it seemed to have fallen out of the sky! A small brown creature stumbled from the wreckage up to the front door. Behind him were several darker creatures that Nika could swear were floating above the ground. As the farmer opened the door, the darker creatures swarmed him, knocking him to the ground.

"Did you see that?" Yelled Nika. "Those things just attacked the human!"

"Now who's seeing things?" asked Kuma, turning toward his mate. However, she was already bolting through the snow toward the farmhouse. "Nika, come back!" Kuma called in a panic. "Just because he feeds us doesn't mean he wants us up—"

"He takes care of us, we take care of him!" Nika called back.

"Darn!" Kuma cursed, running after Nika. "How can a wolf be so easygoing, and so impetuous at the same time!"

Nika was already halfway to the front door when it swung open again. Out came the farmer, with the long straight stick that was the human's answer to not having teeth and claws.

"Whew," Nika said to herself. "I thought those things had him. I'm glad he's not—"

"Move it, Nika!" yelled Kuma, knocking her aside just as a flash and a bark came from the end of the farmer's stick.

"Woah!" yelled Nika, picking herself up off the ground. "I guess you're right. We have overstayed our welcome, I guess! Come on, Kuma, before we're—"

Looking back to where she had been standing a second earlier, there lay Kuma, in a growing patch of red snow.