Blood pooled in the fresh hay she’d set down before she left and splattered a trail outside the fence, all the way to the woods.

“Sorry, honey.” Her father came over, lugging a bucket of water to add to the water heater for the chickens. “I came out as soon as I heard the fuss, but he’d already killed two of them. I chased him away, but he’ll be back, I’m sure.”

“No matter what I do, he finds a way in.” She’d practically built Fort Knox for her hens—a huge six-by-twelve fenced area with a roof and tight chicken wire, a raised insulated house with laying beds, a heated tank for water, and lights to mimic the sunlight. Her Barred Rock hens laid beautiful light brown eggs year-round, and she sold them at the farmers market in the summer. “If Granite was here, he would have heard him.”

But he was still out on the trail with Peyton, and given they hadn’t returned yet, Echo guessed that Peyton had continued her route.

Echo had been at the vet hospital most of the day, deciding to wait, after Dodge left, for Holly to wake. Anuk let her shower at her home, fed her, and Echo had even grabbed a couple more hours of sleep before she helped Anuk tend a couple patients—a French bulldog named Bandit, recovering from soft palate surgery, and a sweet husky named Mo, undergoing chemotherapy.

Holly finally woke and Echo sat with her, feeding her by hand and settling her. Holly lifted her pretty blue eyes to Echo when her dad showed up to drive her home. “I’ll be back, sweetie,” she had promised.

Her dad was thin-lipped as she described the events of the night.

“You sure the grizzly had a white tuft between its ears?”

“Not even a little. It wasn’t George, Dad. He wouldn’t have attacked.”

“George is used to humans. He grew up with us feeding him from our hands. He is also used to dogs and wouldn’t have a fear of them either.”

She’d looked out the window of the truck, not wanting to feed her father’s worry. The sun hung low, the night already descending behind Denali, turning the ice-packed spires a deep amber, the descending valleys a rich violet. Nothing compared to a sunset in Alaska, regardless of the time of year.

Probably one of the reasons she’d stayed.

Her dad had turned on the radio, listening to the weather report from KTNO, the local station. Norm Dahlquist’s resonant tenor predicted a dip in the temperatures, a storm brewing from the north. Apparently, last night’s blow was just the appetizer.