“Hey, big guy it’s good to see you.” There’s a quaver in my voice. “I was worried about you, Shadow. Why don’t you come inside, get warm? You can lie down by the fire.”

Having a predator stare at you is one of the most unnerving experiences you can have. Being singled out from the herd. Realizing you are now his prime target. His next meal.

The fear that skitters up my spine is primal.

As he takes a tentative step toward me, I fight the urge to grab the knife. Like any wet dog, his body seems strangely shaped with his fur matted. His ice-clumped coat looks burdensome.

I have to remind myself there was a time when this ferocious creature lived among people.

The man from Montana who’d weaned him had fed him Puppy Chow from a bowl. Even the Maine drug addicts, who obtained him illegally and were his last “owners,” had kept him indoors, locked in their foul basement.

I had never planned on keeping Shadow. I told people that the wolf had escaped, but it was just as accurate to say I’d let him go. The distinction didn’t matter. What mattered was that he’d begun a new life in the high timber of western Maine. He’d hunted and scavenged in the wild, and he’d thrived. Occasionally, someone would spot him, often in the company of another large canine, thought to be one of the occasional wild wolves that make their way down from Canada. State wildlife biologists denied the existence of Shadow and his female companion. “There are no wild wolves in Maine,” was the official line.

Then an idiot shot him with a crossbow. And through a twist of fate, I’d become his protector once more.

God seemed to want the wolf in my life. For what purpose, I still cannot imagine.

What am I to him though?

I sure as hell am not his owner. Or his “pet parent,” to use a term I disdain.

Am I the jailer who foiled his many escape attempts? Or the tormentor who put him in a box to be drugged and half-drowned?

His unblinking stare reveals nothing of his mind.

“Why don’t you come get warm?” I find myself saying again.

He hangs there at the ragged edge of the firelight. The patience of wolves.

And then, without warning, he trots toward me, leaps the threshold, and plops down at my feet.

With the campfire flickering and the wolf dog beside me, I feel like I’ve found myself in the most fucked-up Jack London story of all time.

Shadow begins to chew the painful chunks of ice from between his toes. One of his paw pads is bleeding. I move my hand in the direction of his injured foot. His lip curls and there is no missing the message.

“If you touch me, I’ll bite your fucking arm off.”

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