Part 5
The Northern Ridges met them with heavy fog and a freezing, persistent drizzle. The trail was little more than a game path, winding steeply upward through jagged limestone boulders and dense stands of lodgepole pine. Greg took the lead, keeping a steady, punishing pace. Alex followed a few yards back, his breath pluming in the gray air.
Gray didn’t walk between them anymore. He flanked them, sometimes disappearing into the wet brush for minutes at a time, tracking scents invisible to the humans. The higher they climbed, the more the wolf seemed to change. The awkward, hesitant limp was completely gone, replaced by a fluid, coiled power. He didn’t look like a rescue animal anymore. He looked like an apex predator returning to his domain.
“Are we close?” Alex asked, his chest heaving as they stopped to rest near a runoff creek.
“About a mile,” Greg said, checking his compass and wiping rain from the glass. “Pack dens up past that saddleback ridge. Found their tracks up here last winter.”
Alex nodded, watching Gray lap freezing water from the creek. The wolf’s ears swiveled constantly, mapping the environment.
“He’s already gone, Al,” Greg said quietly, watching his son. “Look at him. The woods are taking him back.”
“I know,” Alex said, his voice tight. “It’s just hard.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
They pushed higher. The timber thinned out as they reached the ridgeline, the air growing sharper, smelling of wet rock and ancient pine. Suddenly, Gray stopped. He planted his front paws firmly on a shelf of granite, the thick fur along his spine rising.
Greg put a hand on Alex’s shoulder, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Listen.”
At first, Alex heard nothing but the wind cutting through the gorge. Then, echoing across the deep canyon, a long, mournful howl rose into the cold air. A second joined it, then a third, blending into a haunting, multi-layered chorus that made the hairs on Alex’s arms stand up.
Gray lifted his massive snout. He let out a deep, vibrating whine, shifting his weight eagerly from paw to paw.
“Go on,” Greg said softly. “They’re calling you.”
The wolf turned back to them. He walked slowly over to Alex and pressed his heavy forehead against the boy’s chest. Alex dropped to his knees in the mud, burying his hands in the thick gray fur, inhaling the sharp smell of rain and wild earth.
“Thanks for looking out for me,” Alex whispered, his throat burning. “Be safe out there.”
Gray let out a soft huff of breath. He gave Alex’s jaw one rough, fleeting swipe with his tongue, then pulled away. He looked at Greg, held the man’s gaze for a long, silent second, and turned. He broke into a steady lope, cresting the ridge and vanishing into the heavy timber without a sound.
Greg rested a heavy hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Let’s go home, kid.”
The summer in the high country arrived hot and violently dry. The mountain creeks shrank to trickles, and the pine needles on the forest floor turned to brittle tinder.
Alex didn’t go back to Spokane. Sarah had driven up in June, furious and terrified, but after a long, tense conversation on the porch with Greg—and seeing how much her son had grown—she relented. The compromise was strict: Alex would take the county bus to Bear Creek High in the fall, maintain a B average, and spend holidays in the city.
The weeks settled into a quiet, grueling rhythm. They chopped cordwood for the upcoming winter, patched the cabin’s cedar shake roof, and prepped traps for the season. Word around town was that Warden Bragg had been forced into early retirement after a state audit found “irregularities” in his tag issuances and a freezer full of unregistered meat. A new warden, a young guy fresh out of forestry school, took over the territory. He was strict, but he played by the book.
They didn’t see Gray.
Occasionally, on the coldest, clearest nights, the distant sound of the northern pack would drift down through the canyon. One voice always seemed deeper, carrying further than the rest.
“Alpha,” Greg noted one evening in late September, sitting on the porch with a cup of black coffee.
“You think he remembers us?” Alex asked, staring out into the dark tree line, listening to the fading echo.
“Wolves don’t forget, Al,” Greg said, taking a slow sip from his mug. “But he’s got his own life now. We did right by him, and he did right by us. That’s as good as it gets.”