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“I hope so,” she said. “I really loved making them.”

Woodcarving, particularly small figurines, was one of True’s passions. While it didn’t pay the bills – she worked at her parents’ restaurant to do that – she spent all her spare time carving figurines and loved giving them as gifts. Like this set of owls for her favorite cousins, who had a dollhouse filled with other ones True had carved.

“Get your things, you know how your dad hates to be late.”

Her mom left the bedroom and True leaned back in the chair and stretched the kink out of her back. Her wings hummed in her back as her owl let out a hoot of anticipation in her mind about the coming flight. Every year they flew from their home in North Dakota to their ancestral winter gathering in the Hudson Bay region, where the Montgomery families would gather from far and wide to spend time together beneath the long Arctic nights. True had made the trek with her family since she was little. Back before she could fly, her parents had to arrange commercial flights. Once she came into her snowy owl shift at sixteen, she’d been flying alongside her parents and the members of their Parliament each December.

She hated the flight – it was long and cold – but she loved seeing her extended family members.

Putting the nearly finished owl in the box with the others, she tucked it into her satchel, which was packed with the bare necessities for the trip: a warm change of clothes, boots, makeup and toiletries, and her e-book reader so she could keep herself warm with all the book boyfriends she’d downloaded ahead of the trip.

“I’m ready,” she said, walking out of her room and heading to the kitchen, where she found her parents and Uncle Jeb waiting.

“You didn’t forget anything this year?” Uncle Jeb asked with a smile.

“Hopefully not,” she said. Then she realized she didn’t have her earbuds, so she ran back to the room and grabbed them, along with a charging cord. “Now I’m ready.”

“Oh sure,” her dad said with a laugh. “Let’s get on our way. The Parliament is already gathered at the alpha’s.”

The alpha, her Uncle Leyland, had been the leader of their Parliament since True was little. He’d been mated, but his mate died a few years ago when the Parliament had flown over a hidden hunters’ settlement and they’d lost several members. Now, they had scouts who flew ahead to look for danger, but that didn’t stop True from worrying something similar might happen.

Their small group walked between the rows of homes to the alpha’s house where the rest of the Parliament was gathered. Her dad moved up to the back deck to speak to the alpha, and True rolled her shoulders, her wings humming as her owl let out an impatient hoot in her mind.

Uncle Leyland lifted his hand. “Stay together and stay safe. Scouts, shift now. The rest of us will follow in ten minutes.”

The handful of males who were scouts walked into the woods to shift, taking quickly to the dark sky. It was night, because it was safer for their people to fly. They’d fly a few hundred miles each night, stopping at dawn to rest and eat.

The cold seemed colder. Was Jack Frost causing the winter to be harsher? It wasn’t Solstice yet, when it would be the very coldest day of the year, but it sure seemed to True like the jackass had been working harder this month.

“You ready?” her mom asked.

True inhaled the sweet smell of the pine trees around them, and took one last look toward the home she wouldn’t see for a couple weeks.

“As I’ll ever be.”

Her mom smiled warmly. “You’ve made this flight for years, you’ll be fine.”

“It’s just cold.”

“It’s always cold in December.”

Uncle Leyland called that ten minutes had passed. Her mom kissed her cheek and gave her a hug, and then they moved into the woods for privacy to strip. True ignored the cold that bit at her skin like a rabid dog as she stripped, focusing on how much she was looking forward to being in her shift. She grabbed the satchel and tightened it around her chest, and then she shifted.

She pushed off the ground and beat her wings, rising through the trees until the town shrank beneath her, her parents nearby, and the Parliament joining one by one, pale wings appearing silver in the moonlight.

Uncle Leyland took the lead with a loud cry, and they followed, forming up loosely behind him. The first stretch of the three-day journey was always her favorite. The wind rushing beneath her wings, the way the sky smelled like snow and starlight so high above the trees, and the hope that at some point along the way, she might feel compelled to go somewhere off course and meet her truemate.

He was out there somewhere, but she just didn’t know where.

And she sure as heck wasn’t going to meet him at a family gathering! But maybe on the way…

Hope sure did spring eternal in her heart.

They flew for hours, and she settled into the steady rhythm of the migration, her owl guiding her through the sky. Ahead of them, she could see the scouts as they watched for danger. Their destination lay quite far ahead.

As the first night passed without issue, they stopped at the one-third mark, shifted and found lodging for the day to rest and eat, before taking to the sky the second night.

As the second night wore on, she relaxed into the familiar flight, her mind drifting from one random thing to another. Until the wind changed.