Page 1 of Salvation

Prologue

Before we start... Be sure to sign up for my newsletter – you’ll get three free stories right away, and you’ll be the first to hear about new releases, special deals, and exclusive bonus content.

* * *

Clouds drifted silently across the midnight sky, obscuring the full moon. The pines were still as the bear lumbered beneath them, favoring his right leg. He paused to sniff the air. It was dry — painfully dry — and carried a thousand unfamiliar scents. The fragrance of hardy wildflowers danced in the high-altitude desert air. The fresh scent of ponderosa and sycamore lay beneath the rest like a carpet, and behind it all was a whiff of burned-out brush fire that made his hackles rise.

It was a warm night — warm, silent, and somehow foreboding, given the way the shadows mimicked his every move.

Where are you going?they seemed to taunt him.Why?

Damned if he knew. He was many hungry months and hundreds of miles away from the ashes of home. Tired, too. Bone-tired. Yet the stars kept pulling him onward, whispering into his mind.

You’re nearly there. Nearly there.

Nearly where?

Early on in his long march south, he had roared the question into the night. Now, he just chuffed and walked on, wondering how much of his mind he’d lost from remaining in bear form for too long. Of course, staying human was just as dangerous; every shifter needed to satisfy both sides of his soul. But Todd wasn’t sure what was left of his soul. He’d never felt emptier or more alone.

Nearly there,the stars promised.

Were the stars playing games with him or leading him to salvation? The spirits of his ancestors congregated around Ursa Major, the Great Bear, and they twinkled at him from between the interlocking pine boughs. They wouldn’t lie, would they?

He’d been wandering for more nights than he could count, swinging his head left and right to check his surroundings. That was a new habit he’d developed since the hearing had been pounded out of him in an attack that had nearly cost him his life. Sometimes, he’d whip his head around, imagining the snap of a twig or the hoot of an owl, but most of the time, his ears registered nothing but a quiet buzz.

He swiped an angry paw at his left ear. If only he could chase away the sound the way he could shoo away a bee. It was growing worse now — a clanging ring that wouldn’t stop, as if he’d lingered too long and too close to the noontime call of church bells and had gone deaf from that, instead of from the beating of bats and bricks.

He gritted his teeth, fighting the memories away. He would have been better off dying as he’d been destined to. Death would have been fine because he had fought for a worthy cause. For duty, for honor, for love. What more could a bear desire?

But instead of fading away and reaching for the light that had called to him from heaven, he’d been fool enough to listen to a voice that had pulled him back from the edge.

Stay with me. Don’t die. Not now. Not like this.

If it hadn’t been the sweetest, fairest voice he’d ever heard, he might have ignored it and moved on to join his ancestors among the stars.

Think of mountain meadows in spring,the kind, feminine voice had pleaded.Think of a clear, cool summer creek. Think of berries growing thick in the fall.

And damn it, he’d pictured one beautiful season after another and gotten greedy for life all over again.

Just think of all the things you’ll live to enjoy again. Stay with me…

The speaker had tricked him, because she’d left out a few important things. Like the crushing guilt of surviving a night most of his clanmates had fallen victim to. The heavy silence in his ears, the gnawing ache in his leg. The feeling of being alone. Why live life as a wreck of a bear or a wreck of a man?

He stopped and shook his fur so hard his teeth rattled then walked slowly onward. Maybe if he found whatever it was that pulled him like a magnet, he could find peace again.

The buzz in his ears rose and fell. It warbled and varied in pitch like…like a sonorous wolf howl. That much, he could tell — more from tiny movements in the air than actual sound. The fur on the centerline of his back stood up as he halted in his tracks and eyed a ridge to the north. Wolves?

There were good wolves and bad wolves, and not even a big, bad grizzly was safe from a pack of the latter, as he’d learned the hard way one fateful night. A night he’d laid it all on the line to protect his cousin’s mate as he’d promised to. He would do it all over again, too, because bears knew all about duty and honor and respect for the power of love. Even knowing he would come out of it damaged in more ways than one, he’d do it all over again. He had no regrets.

Except one. One terrible regret from the time before the attack. Something that tainted his honor and haunted his soul.

He sniffed until he spotted the wolves howling on the ridge. Two of them, sitting side by side, their noses pointed at the moon.

Why wolves howled, he had no clue, but he’d never been more tempted to try it than in the bleakness of the past few months.

Then they broke off — he could tell when the ringing in his ears went monotone again — and snapped their muzzles in his direction. A moment later, they came stalking down the slope, right at him.

He watched and waited, sniffing the air as they loped up and circled him. They kept their noses high and their shoulders low, ready to flee. The dark-haired she-wolf circled him clockwise while the gold-hued male paced the other way, growling quietly the whole time. He could tell from the angle of the wolves’ jaws, from the tingle in his ears. He let a warning rumble build in his own throat in reply.

---