Nah, he shouldn’t call them that. The sarge wasn’t running a foster home, and he sure wasn’t their father. He was just the guy who’d taken—rescued—the four of them from a California foster home and brought them to Alaska.

Because the foster father in LA had been a pervert.

Hawk scowled and fell even farther behind. He could still feel the guy’s hands touching him, ripping his shirt. The knee pinning him down to the bed.

Sometimes those memories got mixed up with the beatings his real father had dished out. Sometimes he kinda got caught, like in that steel trap the sarge had showed them. Mako’d been pissed off, cuz the trap was all steel teeth that’d dig into some poor animal.

The shit Hawk’d been through had left behind big holes.

Turning, Gabe gave him a worried look. The kid was ten, a year older than Hawk. He was okay, but kinda like one of those weird dogs that rounded up sheep. Gabe got antsy, like, if he couldn’t keep track of the other boys, they might get hurt or something.

Hawk looked away. Nobody needed to worry about him; nobody ever had before.

“Caz, where’s the closest water?” Mako kept moving up the trail. It wasn’t right. He was old, maybe even fifty or something, but he wasn’t even breathing hard.

The rest of them were panting like dogs in L.A. during the summer.

“Water. It is…” Caz looked around. He was a year younger than Hawk and Bull—and Hawk liked to call him the baby to piss him off an’ make him swear. Not that Hawk usually understood what Cazador said; the baby still dropped into Spanish when he got mad.

Caz’s shoulders hunched. “No sé.”

Hawk didn’t know either.

“Listen,” Mako said. “You got two ears; use them. All of you.”

They stopped to listen. And yeah, Hawk could hear water running. A creek or something. Keeping one hand on the rock wall, he turned his head to try to pinpoint it. It was somewhere way, way, way down the scary-as-shit slope part on the other side of the trail.

Why’re we walking up the side of a mountain, anyway?

They all pointed toward the creek.

“Good. Next time, find it before I ask,” Mako said. “Which way is home?”

Home.

Hawk scowled. Guess he’d lived in the log cabin like a month now, so okay, maybe it might kinda be almost home. In the loft, he had a bed and even a box for his stuff. Nobody bothered the shit he found—the eagle feathers, the tiny nest, an eggshell littler than a grape.

Suddenly there was a rattle of stones from behind him. A baby elk darted out and dodged past him, heading up the trail past the others.

Jesus, it was cute.

“Move,” the sarge roared and pointed at something behind Hawk.