I had never had a brother. It had always been a pretty basic family, me and my mom, just her to me and back. A line segment. No father, no siblings, no cousins no uncles and aunts. Well, cousins and stuff, but they were all way out in the Midwest, and plus my mom didn't like them. Whenever we talked about them, words like "straight-laced" and "farming community" came up, but spoken with an inflection that meant these were bad things. My mom, professional black sheep, occasional loon.

Anyway, the closest thing I'd ever had to brothers had been the pack. Supportive, protective, bound to you with something the next notch up from friendship. That was what it was like to have a brother, right?

Well, apparently not. Apparently what brothers did was try to rip your throat out.

As crazy-hostile as this Luke kid was, I really had not been expecting him to jump at me like that. I wasn't ready—he would have hit me and he would have done some serious damage. That would not have been a good start to our relationship at all.

Fortunately for me, someone else was a little more on the ball. Luke didn't even make it to me—he only got about halfway before wham! The other wolf got between us and slammed him with his shoulder, tumbling him over into the snow.

Luke, chill! the guy was yelling. What is wrong with you, man, you can't just go around trying to bite people's heads off!

Did you hear what he said, Caleb? Luke was struggling under him, trying to twist away and presumably try to kill me again. Did they have pharmacies in Alaska? Psychiatrists? Because this kid was seriously in need of some medicating. He said he was my brother, do you know what that means? He's saying that my dad was sleeping around, that he was having—

Luke! Shut up!Two other wolves were running at us from the houses, probably called by Caleb and thank God, because Luke the Psycho was in serious need of a police escort. Jason, Dale, can you give me a hand here?

Luke gone off again? one of them asked, circling between them and us like they were herding sheep as Caleb started to let Luke up.

Kind of reminds you of Paul, doesn't he? Quil said wryly, standing well back from the situation.

What? Paul was never this bad.

Sorry about that, Caleb said, coming toward us as the others moved away. Luke's got some—issues.

Neither of us were going touch that with a ten-foot pole. Okay, Quil agreed swiftly. Cool.

So, uh—none of the rest of you have a problem with us, right? I asked, just to make sure. One near-death experience a day was quite enough for me.

Well, Caleb hedged. Technically you probably shouldn't…be here. But if you are Mr. Stokes' son…

Then I should see him, I finished firmly.

Yeah, Caleb said. I guess you should. Let's get human, I'll take you into town.

---

I don't know what kind of goofy ideas I had about Alaska—I think I basically had the idea that that everybody in Alaska lived in igloos and drove dogsleds around everywhere they went. If I'd actually stopped to think about those ideas, I probably would have realized that they were actually pretty stupid. I mean, thousands of people lived in Alaska—I'm sure it was just as civilized as any other state. Possibly more civilized than South Dakota.

Even so, I was a little surprised to be sitting in on a couch in a fully non-igloo two-story house, floral themed with Normal Rockwell pictures on the wall. I had my feet crossed under the couch and my hands locked together on my lap, feeling a little uncomfortable. Quil was sitting next to me. A girl was sitting across from me, looking at me intently, as if she were trying to find something out.

She was about fourteen or fifteen, skinny, short hair, totally unashamed to be staring at us. As soon as we had been ushered into the living room, she had just followed us right in, sitting down on the loveseat across from us with an expectant expression, saying nothing.

"Excuse me," she said finally. "I don't suppose either of you have just imprinted on me."

Quil and I exchanged a look. "Um," I said. "No. No, both of us are spoken for."

She heaved a giant sigh, disappointed but resigned. "Of course you are. Everyone around here is spoken for."

Boy, I knew how that felt. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Quil said helpfully. "Sorry. That must suck."

"Oh, it's all right," she said, in the heavy teenage tone that meant that it was not actually all right at all. "It's fun to have you here anyway. Paskiak can get a little old, just the same people all the time, and all of them in love. I'm Kira, by the way. It's Quil and Embry, right? I heard you talking to Caleb."

"Paskiak," I said, trying the word out on my tongue. If I really was the son of a Native Alaskan elder, then this was my heritage. Shouldn't this feel right and natural, suddenly familiar? At least it explained why my fur was light grey—Arctic wolf—when everyone else in the pack was darker. "That's—here, right?"

"And what about that, anyway?" Quil asked suspiciously, as if he suspected this might all be part of some kind of elaborate ruse. "How come there's this whole—village in the middle of the national park? I mean, isn't that sort of illegal?"

"Not for us," Kira said. "God, what kind of a tribe are you from? It was our land first, you know."

"Yeah, we know," I said, smiling. "So it's like a reservation, then?"

"Well, 'like' a reservation in that it's a reservation," she said. "Yeah."

"So, um," I said. "Do you know Kenai Stokes?"

"Mr. Stokes," she asked, surprised. "Yeah, he's—"

"Right here."

The voice came from the doorway—from the man standing in the doorway, tall, close-cropped hair, silver crescent scar. "Oh," I said. "Hi, Dad."

---

"Embry," Kenai said. "What are you doing here?"

I had an answer to that question. I had that answer, I really did. But I was looking at my dad and his eyes were very black, and he didn't really seem to have—facial expressions. It was disconcerting. He was a disconcerting person, and he was disconcerting me. It was possible that I was terrified of him.

"Um," I said.

"What are you doing here?" he repeated. It was just the two of us in the living room now, just me and Kenai. The instant he'd shown up, people disappeared like a magic trip, making barely audible excuses and slipping out the side door. Even Quil was gone, God knows where they'd taken him. This whole place was weird.

"What am I doing here?" What could I possibly be doing here? "I came to see you, dad."

"How did you—"

"Sue Clearwater," I said. "Then mom."

"Sue Clearwater." He shook his head. "I didn't recognize her."

"Yeah, she got older," I said, "I assume."

"So you're telling me you that you came all the way up here just because you saw me once—"

"'Thanks for the coffee, kid'?" I quoted.

"Yeah," he said, and had the grace to look a little ashamed. "Sorry, I shouldn't have even—listen, how did you even get here? I was only there two days ago."

"Well," I said carefully. "Let's just say I inherited more than your eyes."

"Oh." He caught on instantly—I could see it in his eyes (hey! An emotion!). "You're a shifter?"

"Sure am."

"Oh," he said. "Sorry about that."

"Doesn't bother me anymore," I told him. "So, um. Now that I'm here…" Again, I had run out of plan. I had hardly expected to be able to find him at all, and now what? What were we going to do, go mini-golfing?

"Embry," he said. "You can't stay here."

"What?"

"You can't stay," he said firmly. "Embry, I'm sorry. You have to go."