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CHAPTER ONE • GRACE

I re cold, surrounded by wolves They were lickingin Their huddled bodies blocked what little heat the sun offered Ice glistened on their ruffs and their breathin the air around us Theand burning leaves, pleasant and terrifying Their tongues melted ed through ainst my collarbone, the pulse at my neck

I could have screaht, but I didn’t I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me

One wolf prodded his nose intoa shadow across my face His yellow eyes looked into mine while the other wolves jerked me this way and that

I held on to those eyes for as long as I could Yellow And, up close, flecked brilliantly with every shade of gold and hazel I didn’t want hirab a hold of his ruff, but my hands stayed curled on my chest, my arms frozen to my body

I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm

Then he was gone, and without hi So seemed to flutter in my chest

There was no sun; there was no light I was dying I couldn’t remember what the sky looked like

But I didn’t die I was lost to a sea of cold, and then I was reborn into a world of warmth

I remember this: his yellow eyes

I thought I’d never see theain

CHAPTER TWO • SAM

They snatched the girl off her tire swing in the backyard and dragged her into the woods; her body made a shallow track in the snow, from her world to mine I saw it happen I didn’t stop it

It had been the longest, coldest winter of my life Day after day under a pale, worthless sun And the hunger—hunger that burned and gnawed, an insatiablemoved, the landscape frozen into a colorless diora to steal trash off someone’s back step, so the rest of the pack stayed in the woods and slowly starved, waiting for warirl Until they attacked

They crouched around her, snarling and snapping, fighting to tear into the kill first

I saw it I saw their flanks shuddering with their eagerness I saw the away the snow beneath her I saw muzzles smeared with red Still, I didn’t stop it

I was high up in the pack—Beck and Paul had made sure of that—so I could’vewith the cold, up to irl s with her? If she was alive, asn’t she struggling?

I could sht scent in this dead, cold world I saw Sale My sto since I’d eaten I wanted to push through the wolves to stand next to Salem and pretend that I couldn’t smell her humanness or hear her soft moans She was so little underneath our wildness, the pack pressing against her, wanting to trade her life for ours

With a snarl and a flash of teeth, I pushed forward Saleier than hily to back me up

I was next to her, and she was looking up at the endless sky with distant eyes Maybe dead I pushed ar and butter and salt, reminded me of another life

Then I saw her eyes

Awake Alive

The girl looked right atmine with such terrible honesty

I backed up, recoiled, starting to shake again—but this tier that racked my frame

Her eyes on my eyes Her blood on my face

I was tearing apart, inside and outside

Her life

My life

The pack fell back froer one of theht she was the el in the snow, and they were going to destroy her

I saw it I saw her, in a way I’d never seen anything before

And I stopped it

CHAPTER THREE • GRACE

38°F

I saw hie of the woods in our backyard, his yellow eyes steady on me as I filled the bird feeder or took out the trash, but he never caht, a ti Minnesota winter, I would cling to the frozen tire swing until I felt his gaze Or, later, when I’d outgrown the swing, I’d step off the back deck and quietly approach him, hand forward, paluage

But noI waited, no matter how hard I tried to reach hirowth before I could cross the distance between us

I was never afraid of hih to knockme into the woods But the ferocity of his body wasn’t in his eyes I reaze, every hue of yellow, and I couldn’t be afraid I kneouldn’t hurt me