When a strange creature crosses into the Wolf Hills, Torkel and his pack of wolf teenagers follow the trail into a mystery that could split their world apart.
At the northern edge of the Wolf Hills, where spruce branches dragged long shadows across the cold ground, the young pack gathered beneath the fading light. Torkel stood at the centre of them, silver-furred, sharp-eyed, and too restless to keep his opinions to himself. For as long as he could remember, the hills had meant safety, order, and the steady rhythm of the pack. Last night had broken that rhythm.
A sound had rolled through the forest after dark, deep and brutal and unlike anything they knew. It had shaken birds from the trees and sent silence crashing down harder than the noise itself. Even now, as mist crept between the roots and the air grew damp with evening, Torkel could feel that wrongness lingering in the woods.
He called the others together at the cliff edge. Ylvi arrived first, bristling with energy and impatience. Freya came without a word, her ears twitching at every scrape of wind through the trees. Rune followed last, still young enough that his tracking skills were better in theory than in practice, though his eyes were steady enough to hide his fear. Below them, the Wolf Hills spread out dark and endless, stitched with ravines and old game trails that seemed to vanish as soon as they were found.
"You heard it too," Ylvi said, glancing into the treeline.
Freya lowered her nose to the wind. "Something crossed into our territory. Big. Not wolf. Not fox. I couldn't place the scent."
Torkel held her gaze for a beat, then looked out over the hills. "Then we find it before it finds us again. Tonight."
Ylvi's tail flicked with excitement. Rune hesitated, then gave a short nod. None of them said it aloud, but they all felt it: whatever had entered the Wolf Hills had changed the rules.
They slipped into the forest once the last strip of sun had disappeared. Needles muffled their paws, and every breath tasted of damp bark, stone, and cold earth. The trail led them through a narrow ravine where their steps came back to them in faint, warped echoes, as if the hills themselves were listening. Beyond it lay a clearing Torkel had never seen before, ringed with dead trees that stood like blackened ribs against the sky.
Something had been here recently. The remains of a deer lay torn and half-covered in leaves, but that was not what stopped them. In the soft earth beside the carcass was a pawprint, enormous and deep, with claws that cut the mud like hooks.
Rune stared at it, his voice dropping to a whisper. "That isn't any wolf I know."
A branch snapped somewhere beyond the dead trees.
All four froze. The fur along Torkel's spine lifted as the silence tightened around them. Then, from the far side of the clearing, two yellow eyes opened in the dark, bright as embers, and a shape slowly stepped forward from the shadows.