Chapter 1 Something I Forgot

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The horses picked up on it before I did. They always do. They don’t carve themselves out from the world and argue with instinct; they just sense the vibe changing in the breeze and react with an ancient kind of listening that humans spend their whole lives trying to relearn.

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Right on cue, all eleven horses went dead quiet. Heads shot up. Ears swiveled toward those cedar-clad peaks just beyond the eastern ridge. The pasture went utterly silent, like someone hit pause on the world. Even the ravens—those wisecracking scoundrels that never shut up—dropped the chatter.

I stood smack in the center of the paddock, one arm clutched around a big flake of hay, my coffee long gone cold on the fence post where I’d abandoned it ten minutes ago. Jasper, that old bay gelding with more opinions than a talk show host, totally ignored the food. He just stared into the heavy timber like he knew exactly what was coming. He was waiting.

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Normally, a morning out here at Wolfstar Ranch smells like wet grass lingering after a dawn mist, cedar needles warming under the sun, and the sharp, animal heat of the herd. But this morning, the breeze carried a foul note that didn’t fit: burned sage and iron. Not the clean, copper zip of fresh blood after a successful hunt, or the gritty tang of knuckles split by a rusty pitchfork. Something older. Bitter. Like a ceremony done wrong, respect torn out by the roots.

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My arms prickled, the skin tightening across my shoulders. The valley inhaled around me, lungs filling with that strange, toxic scent.

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The sun was only half up, staining the sky with pale blue and gold. Wolfstar Ranch rolled out beneath it, each heavy log building catching the early light as if the mountain itself had carved them from the wood. My grandparents’ cedar-shake house sat perched on a gentle rise, overlooking the lower pasture. Beyond that stood the red-roofed barn, the tin machinery sheds, and Silver Song Creek winding through the valley like a ribbon before diving back into the thickets.

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To tourists passing by on the highway, it was just another picturesque ranch. A postcard stop. If they’d read the local papers, they believed the feel-good pieces about how the Wolfstar Foundation bankrolled our language classes, youth scholarships, Elder care, and the systematic buying back of the territory we'd lost to development over a century ago which was money from the casinos we'd set up when the suits said Indigenous people could never run anything bigger than a frybread stand.

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But outsiders never asked why we bought chunks of jagged mountain forest that barely break even on paper. Or why we leave certain slopes of old-growth cedar completely untouched when the timber is worth millions.

My family calls those places the Heart Places. Four spots on the territory where the land doesn't just sit there. It breathes. It has a pulse.

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We’ve faced plenty of folks who tried to seize that power for themselves. Some in pinstriped jackets, some carrying high-powered rifles, others chanting spells older than kingdoms. None of them got it. You can’t steal the heartbeat without breaking the world.

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I slipped my gloved fingers beneath my flannel shirt until they found the heavy pendant resting against my bare chest. Cool turquoise and jagged black obsidian, worn smooth by generations of medicine hands before mine. The old people say the necklace chooses its keeper. For me, that choice had been baptized in blood.

I was twelve years old the first time I killed a man. He was a rogue rogue wolf, mangy and half-mad, who had crossed our eastern boundary tasting for pack blood. I didn't have a weapon. I had my bare hands, teeth, and a primal fury that woke up before my own mind did. By the time my father found me in the brush, the intruder's throat was torn out, and I was sitting in the red dirt, covered in his heat, staring at the trees. I learned right then what I was. An Alpha isn't a title you wear like a crown; it's a boundary you enforce with your life. I was a protector. A killer when required. And, eventually, a healer.

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The stones against my skin suddenly flared hot. Scorchingly hot.

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My pulse answered back, a heavy, rhythmic thrumming that matched a slow tremor crawling up through the soles of my boots. The horses backed away from the fence line, stamping the grass, their nostrils flaring. They were glued to the forest edge, sensing that whatever waited beyond the cedars had just marked its territory with an invisible, hostile line.

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I reached for the little Motorola clipped to my heavy leather belt, the rugged one Oliver gave me after I took over Ranch Ops. No apps, no touch screen. If it clicked, it worked.

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Before I could lift it to my mouth, a wolf's howl split the canyon wide open.

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The sound was sharp enough to make every hackle on my body rise. It was a brutal, scraping sound. It carried exhaustion, warning, and a raw, dangerous strain of anger.

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It wasn't one of ours.

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My chest tightened, the Alpha inside me locking and loading. Fear narrows your thinking; responsibility sharpens it into a blade. I pressed the transmit button.

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"Lodge, this is Alpha. Eastern boundary. I've got a breach."

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Static crackled for a heartbeat. Then Hendrix's calm, clipped British voice cut through. "Copy, Alpha. You want me to deploy Bear?"

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I looked back at Jasper. The gelding had shifted, positioning his heavy frame squarely between me and the tree line. "Negative, Spook. Hold Bear and Bounce at the Lodge. I want eyes on it first. Stand by."

I clipped the radio back, turned on my heel, and vaulted the wooden fence line.

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The moment my boots hit the shadows of the forest floor, the modern world vanished. The damp air smelled overwhelmingly of charred herbs and wet loam. I didn't use the human trails. I dropped low, tracking a path only a wolf could leave—tiny broken twigs, deep impressions pressed into the moist moss. Someone, or something, had deliberately trampled through the ward line I’d protected since I was a girl.

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I eased forward, keeping the wind firmly in my face so my scent wouldn't carry. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy in sharp, dusty beams, looking like tiny spirits dancing in the dark.

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At the edge of a small clearing, I stopped. The world slowed down to the frantic pace of my heartbeat.

There, laid out in the crushed moss, was a sick arrangement: small river stones circled around a crude clay bowl filled with blackened sage, ash, and charred corvid feathers. A ritual. But there was no respect here. No Elders’ blessing, no proper litany. Just a violent, stolen magic dropped onto ground that didn't belong to them.

Kneeling, I brushed away the ash. My knuckles scraped against something metallic at the circle's center. A rifle casing. Corroded, but fresh enough to leave an oily smudge on my fingers. Whoever had been here had spilled blood on a sacred threshold, desecrating the unspoken treaty between the living and the ancestors.

A dark, territorial rage flared hot in my gut, heavy and possessive. This land was mine. The pack was mine. And the deep, instinctive pull in my chest told me that whatever this ritual was trying to disturb, it was playing with a fire that would burn the whole valley down.

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I pressed my bare palm flat against the wounded earth, closing my eyes, and murmured the old Secwepemcstin words Oliver had passed down to me which are words meant to bind and heal ground that had been torn open.

The forest shifted. The branches creaked overhead as a sudden gust of wind scoured away the toxic, burnt scent, replacing it with the clean, cold rush of pine and ancient cedar. The stones beneath my hand glowed faintly, a subtle vibration of gratitude from the soil itself.

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A low, guttural rustle sounded directly behind me.

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I spun on my heel so fast my boots dug deep into the loam, my hands instantly curling into claws, ready to tear into whatever was in my blind spot.

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Branches parted. There, standing in the dappled shadows, was a massive, battle-scarred wolf. His fangs were bared in a slow, lethal snarl, his thick fur bristling with aggression. But as his amber eyes locked onto mine, the predatory rage mutated into something else it was curiosity, caution, and an old, instinctual desperation. He had been drawn here by the sickness of the ritual, a stray piece on a board he didn't understand.

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I didn't back down. I stood to my full height, projecting the absolute, crushing weight of my Alpha aura into the clearing. I extended a single open palm into the space between us, letting him smell the blood of the intruders I'd killed over the years, and the deep, sovereign magic of the mountain.

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"Weytk, brother," I whispered, my voice dropping into the low, structural register of our language. "Melemstye."

The ancient word acted like a physical anchor. The massive wolf paused, his flanks quivering as the tension slowly drained from his spine. The savage snarl faded. He lowered his head a fraction, recognizing the apex authority standing in front of him. We reconnected through a blood-channel older than the treaties.

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He stayed for only a heartbeat longer before turning back into the thick brush, his tail flashing through the ferns as if to say, I'm holding the line.

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I didn't waste time. I scooped up the metallic casing and the defiled stones, bundling them tightly into the hood of my canvas jacket, leaving the ash to be washed away by the mountain rain.

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When I broke through the tree line back into the bright light of the pasture, the horses milled around me in a restless circle, their snorts echoing against the hills. Jasper nickered low, blowing a heavy breath against my shoulder.

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I unclipped the Motorola, my voice tight, hard, and entirely devoid of the morning's peace.

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"Spook, Alpha to Spook. I've got confirmation of a physical and spiritual breach on the eastern border. Foreign ritual site and ammunition recovered. I need a full tactical sweep of the perimeter lines immediately."

Hendrix’s voice came back instantly, the casual tone completely gone. "Copy that, Alpha. Unit Bear is rolling out now. ETA ten minutes."

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I stood by the fence, watching the sun climb over the peaks, the cold weight of the casing heavy in my pocket. To anyone driving down the highway right now, I was just a ranch girl standing by her herd on a gorgeous British Columbia morning.

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But peace isn’t a museum exhibit. It’s a battlefield.

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My name is Lexie Wolfstar. I'm the Alpha of this valley, and God help whatever thinks they can take it from me.

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