Firstborn by Tor Seidler Page B

chance. In early March, temperatures soared above freezing, and one day, on her way across the Lamar River, she broke through the ice. It was even quicker than with Rider. One second Libby was there—the next second she was gone forever.
    Everyone was distraught, especially her mother. But at least Alberta had something to distract her from her sorrow, for she couldn’t long hide the fact that a new litter was on its way. Ben, on the other hand, seemed truly lost. I’d been so taken with Lamar that I hadn’t paid much attention to his siblings, but no one could have missed how inseparable Ben and Libby had been. Now Ben had no one to play or spar with. When Lamar offered to spar with him, Ben muttered that it wouldn’t be a fair contest; Lamar was so much bigger. Hope did her best to pay more attention to him, but then tragedy struck her . The warm snap was just a tease, and when temperatures plummeted again, everything turned very icy. One morning, on the way down the path from the overlook, Hope lost her footing and slipped all the way to the bottom, impaling herself on a branch jutting out of a fallen tree. The other hunters were well out ahead, leaving only Lamar and Ben to race down and pull her off. The puncture wound was near her heart.
    â€œTake her back to Frick,” I cawed, remembering how he’d saved her when she was a tiny thing.
    Ben helped sling her across Lamar’s back, and Lamar carried her home. Hope was panting so heavily that I was afraid she was breathing her last, but when Lamar gently deposited her in the snow near the den she managed to speak.
    â€œYou’re good”—she gasped —“at carrying runts.”
    Frick was sleeping in, as he always did on days when Lamar went on the hunt, but the sight of Hope’s serious wound transformed him. He sprinted into the woods. I’d never seen him move so fast. He came racing back, slid to his knees by Hope, and gave her what looked like a long kiss.
    â€œChew,” he said when he broke away.
    Hope chewed. Leafy bits leaked out of her mouth. Frick must have dug up some healing herbs he’d buried in the woods and transferred them from his mouth to hers.
    Frick nursed her through the dangerous phase. But it was clear she was going to be out of action a while, and with another hunter lost and game growing scarcer and scarcer Lamar got no more days off. He didn’t get any nights off from Frick-warming, either. Raze had suddenly taken Ben under his wing—if you can use such an expression with wolves—and the grateful young wolf insisted on sleeping by his new mentor.
    As things got worse, the wolves went back to their old habit of hunting at night. Much as I disliked it, I went with them, but they had no more luck in the dark than they’d had in the daylight, and I was glad when they lapsed back to their morning schedule.
    The first thing Hope did when she was on her feet again was suggest to Lamar that she take over Frick-warming duties.
    â€œThe truth is, I need warming myself,” she said, averting her eyes shyly. “Part of my recovery.”
    With April as cold as January, Hope and Frick took to sleeping so closely entwined they seemed like one wolf. Lamar was free again to slip over the hill at night and listen for Artemis. But although there were plenty of wolves howling, and the odd coyote, Artemis’s musical howl was missing.
    Lamar pinned his hopes on the next full moon. And it turned out to be such a lovely, clear night that, perched near him in the poplar sapling, I almost felt like howling myself. But Artemis didn’t.
    â€œWhat can it mean, Maggie?” he asked anxiously.
    I figured she’d either been killed or found a new mate, but I didn’t have the heart to share my theories.
    â€œMaybe she has laryngitis,” I said.
    This idea cheered him up, but only briefly. “She couldn’t have had it this long,” he said.
    His doleful