it again. Nor will I risk my family. But if you let me save you, I will help you take him to your family. We will bring you close enough that you may finish the trip yourself. But you must survive to do so.”
“But . . . I . . .”
“If you choose to die, I will raise him here, with my family. He will be as safe as I can make him.”
But he would never meet their remaining parents, nor their other brothers and sisters. He wouldn’t have the blessings of learning the Gospel at an early age. He would be lost, and their parents would never know . . .
Once again, a scripture verse jumped into Jennilee’s mind, as if someone had silently spoken the words in her head: Greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends.
She couldn’t remember the reference, not that it mattered, but the words seemed to fill her battered, aching skull, and just for a moment, the darkness at the edge of her vision receded, and she knew what to do.
“Save me,” she whispered, feeling a pang even as she did so. She might not ever make it to eternity, but her brother would know his family, and would be raised with a knowledge of the Gospel. A fair enough trade, in her reckoning.
The dark-haired woman smiled. “As you wish.” The darkness returned to the edges of Jennilee’s vision, but she could just barely make out the way that the woman’s shape began to soften and change. Her dark hair spread, began to cover her body. Her face stretched into a muzzle. Her ears lengthened and moved forward and up on her skull as she hunched down and flowed into the form of a gray wolf.
Jennilee lay back and let the darkness take over. The last thing she felt was a sharp pain in her arm, just above her hand. She tried to open her eyes and see what had happened, but the darkness dragged her back down into sweet oblivion.
* * *
—
Fever followed. Heat seared through her being, leaving her feeling scalded and light. Bright flashes behind her eyelids resolved themselves into fantastic, overly vivid images. Once again, she saw the blood from Anna’s labor, and her brother’s birth. Only this time, it splashed scarlet across the snow, white on red, like the bone from her ankle against her ruined leg . . .
Pain stabbed through her, radiating outward from her center. Great, jagged needles of bone, starting in her abdomen and pushing outward in all directions . . .
More heat, and the inner surge that usually accompanied fear. Her heart raced, thudding loudly, too loudly in her ears. Her skin twitched all over her body.
Jennilee opened her mouth to scream, but all she could do was howl.
* * *
—
When Jennilee could finally open her eyes again, everything looked wrong. The colors were off, she realized. Muted, somehow. She shook her head, but even her neck moved differently. Everything moved differently.
Slowly, she got to her feet. Her balance felt different as well, but her body seemed to adjust to itself quickly. Jennilee turned her head, and saw the gray female watching her.
She approved, Jenni realized. She didn’t know how she knew that, but something in the other wolf’s posture seemed to tell her, very clearly, that she, Jennilee, was adapting well. Jennilee took an experimental step forward, then turned away from the brightness of the fire.
That flame that had been so welcome and calming before seemed only hot and destructive now. Plus, it stank, laying its thick scent over everything else in the cave. Jenni realized that she could make out the scent of each individual wolf, and they were so varied! She inhaled deeply, pulling the air in through her nose, and her brain registered the current and recent locations of each of the pack members. Their scents lay across the cave like memories, crossing and recrossing.
And there, in the corner, was one whose scent was so very different. Jenni blinked, squinted, and saw the figure of her little brother curled up with his nursemaid. Her