“Probably.” Zander shrugged. They reached the mainland and he navigated through town, then drove out the other side, back to open country. “I’d like to think the Goddess doesn’t get as pissed off as Nature seems to,” Zander said as he peered down the road. “But yeah, when it’s not trying to kill you, Alaska can be the best place on earth.”

Rae was studying him with those penetrating gray eyes. Many, many thoughts went on behind them—Zander was pretty sure that the Felines she’d been living with had never understood the depths of the Lupine they’d taken in.

Wolves could be taciturn, giving you their level stare, while behind those eyes they were planning world domination . . . or maybe the best way to hole up and take a nap. You could never be sure. Zander was the largest land predator on earth and still, Rae’s wolf gaze unnerved him.

“What?” he asked in irritation.

“You’re not from Alaska,” Rae said. “Eoin learned all about you from Dylan, in the Austin Shiftertown. You’re from the Shetland Islands and you were living in Texas most of this spring.”

“So? Doesn’t mean I don’t like it here.” Zander took a tighter grip of the wheel. “I’ve traveled quite a bit over the years and this is a good place. Besides, if I want to run around as a polar bear and someone sees me, it’s not a huge shocker. I just make sure I’m someplace remote so they don’t tranq me and drive me back to the ice floes.”

“Then why were you in Texas?”

Zander understood that she was asking about him to keep her mind off what was to come. He didn’t like to talk about everything he’d done in Texas but she needed the distraction. “A Shifter there truly needed me. I helped him, then Dylan asked me to stick around in case I was needed again. I hung out there for a while, then decided I needed to get away from Shiftertowns and remember what it’s like to be on my own. So I came back here.”

He left out a lot with this explanation. From her look, Rae picked up that fact but she didn’t pursue it. One day, maybe, he’d tell her the whole tale, like why he’d moved to Homer instead of back to his trailer in the woods north of Anchorage.

Zander turned off the highway once they reached Anchor Point and took narrow and winding roads inland.

Rae fell silent as they traveled away from the sea through a flat plain studded with evergreens, open fields rolling away from the road, the stark mountains rising to the east. Rae looked around curiously but they didn’t speak, the weight of what they’d find at the end of the road pressing on them.

Zander slowed for the town of Nikolaevsk, a tiny community built by Russians in the 1960s. These Russians were called “Old Believers” who’d resisted changes in the Russian Orthodox services several centuries before, or so Zander’s friend Piotr Ivanov, who lived here and fished out of Homer, had told him. The onion-shaped dome of the church rose over the small cluster of the town’s buildings, and residents were walking about on errands on this pleasant day.

A man whose wife wore a long skirt and head scarf in the Russian way, their son in jeans and a light jacket, spied Zander and raised his hand.

“Hey, Moncrieff!” he called.

Zander waved back without slowing. He knew Piotr would ask him when they met up again why he’d simply driven through without stopping for a chat and a drink. For now, Zander drove out of town and into a remoter area, heading for the mountains.

Rae was watching him again. “Do you know everyone in Alaska?”

Zander considered. “Well, I know at least one person in every part of it, so, maybe.”

“And they know you’re Shifter?”

“Some do, some don’t. Piotr there does but he doesn’t say anything. The people in Nikolaevsk like their privacy—they’re not going to call Shifter Bureau to come poking around. Piotr’s family ended up here after fleeing Siberia then China, though they lived in Oregon for a while.”

Rae looked around at the barren uplands and the rising mountains. “So isolated.”

“Right, because western Montana isn’t.” Zander chuckled. “There are a couple of clumps of Shifters out here, small families only, and they don’t show themselves much.”

Rae gave him a look that told him nothing and returned to watching the scenery.

Not long later, Zander took a dirt road into the heart of the wild country and pulled to a halt next to a bridgeless river.

He stopped the truck. “Come on,” he said when Rae glanced around. “We’re here.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rae never in her wildest dreams thought she’d end up deep in the middle of nowhere in Alaska, outside a town where everyone spoke Russian, following a polar bear to a hidden cluster of Shifters.

She’d never have believed she’d be carrying the Sword of the Guardian on her back in a case designed for a fishing rod, trusting an eccentric Shifter healer to find a house and then get her back to civilization. This had to be a nightmare of unimaginable proportions.

Zander kept a swift pace, unceasing and determined. There was no true path, and trees everywhere. While Rae was used to woods, these seemed to spread out in all directions without pattern. The ground was dry and hard, the undergrowth minimal.

Zander hiked without worry. His broad back filled out his duster coat, which swirled around his boots with his even stride. Rae had to trot to keep up with him.

Just when Rae thought they’d move through these woods forever, Zander stopped. Scrub had been piled up in this cluster of trees, blocking the view of a casual passerby—if any had bothered to walk this far off the road. Zander lifted away enough of the broken branches and brush to reveal a hole in a clearing, within which was a house.

A nice house. Rae gazed in surprise at a snug log abode that was fairly large, with a veranda running the length of the front. A firebreak separated the house from the bulk of the trees and a fence enclosed a garden. While no vehicles stood near the house, an open shed showed her a pair of sleek snowmobiles.

Zander gave Rae a look of faint amusement. “You think we live out here like rats in a hole? Don’t think so.”

He strode forward, slower this time, his smile fading. He stopped at the porch’s bottom step and looked around in growing alertness.

Rae knew he wouldn’t simply walk up the stairs to the front door. This was another Shifter’s territory—Zander and Rae had to wait to be invited.