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It hit me suddenly, and with such clarity that it literally took my breath away, like strong mint or cold water—this was a bad idea.

I didn't mean going to save my dad—though that was seeming less and less intelligent as the three wolves closed around me and I turned my back to Tanya's, suddenly sick that I'd gotten her into this, that I'd asked for her help.

I mean, obviously I needed it—I'd always known I was not the best at this bite-and-kill thing, I was probably more like third best or something, and plus Damon and Luke had the force of their craziness behind them. They were To Be Reckoned With. And now Tanya was in on it and she could get hurt. I was still craning my neck around Luke to look at Kenai on the river, he couldn't really be dead, could he? He couldn't really be dead. Either way, I didn't want Tanya to end up lying on the ice like that.

But that wasn't what I meant when I said this was a bad idea. I meant this was a bad idea, THIS. All of this. Alaska. This whole stupid road trip, this damn Lifetime movie quest. I should have never left Washington, who did I think I was? I was missing work. I had finals. I had met my dad and that had meant what, exactly? It had solved no problems. It had given me questions that I never had and multiplied my real questions into a hundred more questions. What had I done here but screw things up?

But it was the kind of realization that comes right as you're barreling over the edge of the cliff, and looking down suddenly realizing where you're going to land. Way too late for preventative action—time to deal with what you've gotten yourself into.

I turned and bumped my head into Tanya's side, as a kind of apology and reassurance, and she put her hand on my neck. "Yeah," she said. "This is great. Any chance we want to just run away?"

They'll just come after us. Damon and Luke had finally lived up to their promise of simmering evil and insanity (add longstanding malice and bring to a boil), and it was just going to have to end here, was all.

"No, that probably wouldn't work," she echoed the thoughts she couldn't hear. "Jeez. I really must love you or something."

I was thrilled to hear her say it—possibly it was the first time it had ever made it out of her mouth—but I had to push those thoughts aside as Luke suddenly, spectacularly, boiled over.

Luke—! Damon tried to get in as he jumped for me—I was pretty sure he wanted to do some more villainous ranting—but Luke was gone. He hit me like a shark, snapping for the base of my spine like any good predator, but before I could even try to shake him off, Tanya had her hands on him, time enough to drag him off and throw him to the riverbed before Damon and the other wolf closed her in a quick pincer movement, trapping her against the slope of the hill. I hooked my head under Damon's ribs and flipped him straight over on my way to Luke, and he scrambled up and followed me, which was what I'd wanted even if it wasn't technically a smart idea at all.

I hesitated a moment before I stepped out onto the river—rivers were more shallow than lakes, right? So they would be more likely to freeze over, right?—but then I ran right onto it. Luke was out there, and so was my dad. I still hadn't had a chance to see him. To make sure that he wasn't dead.

I had to admit, as I made it to his body—he didn't look good. The scratches on his shoulder hadn't healed, they should have healed, and the bite on his neck was—deep. In the middle of all the fur and muscle and blood I could see white pieces of bone, and I knew instantly, instinctively, that bone was not a thing I should be seeing, not there.

Dad? I bent my front legs to lean down to him, and the right one protested, still injured, but I was not paying attention because I was looking to see if he was breathing and freaking out because the answer looked like no. Dad!

He'd been gone most of my life. He'd been a vague Dad-shaped shadow in the past and not my present, I hadn't known him, he hadn't been there. So did I get to know him for five days? Was that the deal? Everyone else had dads. Everyone I knew got a dad, why not me? I'd just found him, why would this happen? What was I doing wrong?

It wasn't fair. I mean, I know that was sort of a given for being alive and all, but this was way past the normal cosmic levels of unfair. This was somebody's tragic ending to a play, this was out-of-the-question ridiculous. And I was abruptly, absolutely furious about it.

Fortunately, when you're in the middle of a life-or-death battle, you get a lot of good opportunities to get your anger out. I could hear the drum of Damon's paws behind me, and I turned just as he jumped at me, bit straight into his leg, and used his momentum to toss him like a doll, straight onto the river. He seemed pretty surprised by this, couldn't blame him really. It was just that a moment ago, Damon and Luke had the edge on me—in terms of skill we were pretty well-matched, but they had that extra notch of blistering psychotic anger. Well, now I was angry too.

You killed my father, I said, stalking after him as he scrambled to get footing on the ice. You killed my father.

It was quite a bit less satisfying to say than I'd expected. That was the trouble with these sorts of things—if you've gotten to the point where you actually mean them, you're not really in a position to enjoy them at all.

Anyway, Damon wasn't the type to be intimidated by that kind of statement or that kind of purposeful walk. He was more likely to be proud of what he'd done. Yes, I did, didn't I? he said with a wolf grin, all teeth and tongue. And I'm glad I did it. I feel better.

Oh, I wouldn't speak too soon, I snarled, and leapt for his throat.

There was a sharp yelp of pain behind us, and I caught a glimpse of the third wolf running away from Tanya, didn't blame him, there seemed to be something wrong with his neck that I was sure was Tanya's fault. Even odds now, and I was personally of the opinion that she counted for about half an army.

She was on the ice quick enough to get Luke out of the middle of our fight, catching him by the scruff of the neck and yanking him straight out of the air. "Embry!" she yelled as I ducked a swipe from Damon's claws. "The river—you have to get off the—"

She was cut off by Luke's head driving straight into her side, using it like a battering ram, why not, it wasn't like he had to worry about losing brain cells. But I got the general gist of it—get off the river. I was now thinking it might be less than solid, and that made me sort of panicked.

Damon didn't seem to catch on quite as fast—as I turned to head for the riverbank, he bit into my neck and dragged me around again, sweeping long arcs into the snow. Don't you ever listen? I yelled. You don't think, Damon, I don't know what's wrong with you.

Thought straight enough to kill Kenai, didn't I? He always had to come back to that, like a kid who had just won the spelling bee.

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant, I said. You killed your brother. Good job. What are you going to do now?

Now? The thought actually seemed to stop him for a moment, and I knew I'd been right—he hadn't really thought about it, hadn't thought about it at all. But it only stopped him for a moment, and then he recovered. Very simple thought patterns, that guy. Now I'm going to kill you.

He stepped backward to brace himself for a leap, his hind leg landing in a patch of frozen reeds growing through the ice. Then, quite unexpectedly for both of us, his foot went straight through, punching a jagged hole. A tiny fissure raced up the river, cracking the ice under my feet.

Ice,I remembered with sudden clarity. I'd read it in the Encyclopedia Britannica, volume II, C-L. Ice weakens around patches of plants because they soak up the sun and weaken the surrounding structure. Weaken it so that under pressure—it breaks.

The ice broke. It broke in sections, huge geometric shapes shattering piece by piece, and it started with the piece directly under Damon. His foot slammed through the ice, then his other foot, then the ground he thought he was standing on was no more than ice cubes and a lot of subzero water. It was generally difficult to stand on water; he didn't.

I wasn't sticking around to watch—I was a pretty good swimmer, I did live on the coast, but falling through a frozen lake had nothing to do with swimming. It had to do with freezing water and with ice closing over your head, and I could feel it breaking under me as I ran. It was breaking up fast, the running water eager to break its shell, running water, of course that was why it wouldn't freeze through, what was I thinking stepping onto it? I hit a frozen edge awkwardly and it started to break off, I had to push off ice that was already shattering under me, jump to the bank—

It was only after I had my feet back on solid, unbreakable ground that I looked back for Damon. At first I didn't see him at all—then a flash of dark gray fur above the choppy river surface—then nothing.

Now that was fair.

There was a bright flare of emotion in my head, and it broke me away from staring at the river, searching for what must have come from Luke, he was the only one left. That was the thing with mind-to-mind communication, it didn't always come in words. This thought, for example, sounded a lot like five exclamation points in a row.

I turned and saw Tanya on the ground, somehow Luke had managed to knock her over—God, he was like a coiled spring, how could there be so much energy in that little twisty body?—and he was lunging for her, snapping at the arm she raised in front of her.

Stop! I yelled without thinking, just out of an instinctive desire not to see Tanya get her arm bitten off. But the word sounded suddenly different in my mind—the same kind of difference as when I was thirteen and woke up one morning with a deeper voice—a thousand new layers to the sound of it, a sudden timbre.

And he stopped. His shut his mouth and we both stopped there, staring at each other in surprise. Stop, I tried again, but the sound wasn't there—I searched back quickly in my mind and found the switch of it, pulling authority in to me like I was grabbing fistsfuls of it. Get away from her. Don't hurt her.

He didn't want to obey me—that much was obvious in the teeth-gritted tension of limbs, the low growl shuddering through his scarecrow frame. But he did it. Slowly, as if animated by strings attached to his feet—he backed off. And we'd both figured out by now exactly what this was.

I'll kill you, he said, no restraints on his thoughts like there were on his body. I'll kill you.

I'm the Alpha. I tried to make it sound convincing. It seemed to be true, I might as well try to believe it. You'll do what I say.

But of course Tanya heard none of this. All she saw was a sudden advantage, weird and unexplained, yes, but she wasn't the type to look it in the mouth. She moved like a rattlesnake, slamming Luke back into a tree hard enough that I could hear the crack of his head hitting wood, and see him going instantly limp. Tanya wasted no time—she knew how fast we healed, so she got there and got her heads on either side of his head, twisting.

I don't know why I did it. As long-lost brothers go, Luke was about as bad as you could get. I didn't like him. He tried to kill me all the time. But I'd watched my father die, and I watched a person fall through a frozen river and drown. I just didn't want to happen again—not even to Luke.

I slid between Tanya and Luke, shoving her carefully back just enough to break her grip. She glared at me, and punched my shoulder way less hard than she could have.

"What? Why?" She was getting pretty good at this guessing what I was thinking thing—then again, this wasn't exactly a tricky one. "He's part of it, Embry. He's dangerous."

I know, I said ruefully. I'm just—not sure he can help it. I don't want him to die.

"You're hopeless," she said, rolling her eyes. "Well, we should get him back to Paskiak, then, they can deal with him. And your dad's body—"

I had forgotten. Well, no, I hadn't forgotten, but it had temporarily taken backseat to trying not to die. Now I looked back to the river with horror—he'd been on the river when the ice had gone.

To my relief, I saw his body at once—on the far side of the running water, lying on unbroken ice. He was still there. He was still above water.

Which, of course, presented a whole new set of problems.

"So," Tanya said. "Do you want to go get him, or shall I?"