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Near the Canadian border and at the edge of the Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge
—a mixture of an old- and new-growth forest that never seemed to dry out—was a town forgotten by the human world.
And it was better that way.
From the outside, Caswell, Maine, was nothing. There was no major highway for miles. The only way one would know Caswell had a name at all was an old sign along a two-lane road. The sign was faded red, held up by two posts with chipped black paint. Gold letters said WELCOME TO, and white against black said CASWELL. Below these words was EST. 1879. At the bottom was a small painting of a tree with a farmhouse and silo set in the distance behind it.
Anyone who found their way to Caswell (usually by accident) would see old farmhouses and streets without a single traffic signal. There was a small grocery store, a diner with a blinking neon sign that said WELCOME, a gas station, and an ancient movie theater that showed films from days gone by, mainly grainy black-and-white monster movies.
That was it.
Except it was a lie.
No one lived in the old farmhouses.
People worked in the store and the diner and the gas station. Even the movie theater.
But none of them stayed in Caswell.
Because just outside of the nothing town was Butterfield Lake.
Large walls surrounded it on all sides, the stone at least four feet thick and reinforced with rebar.
Inside those walls was a compound.
And it was here that the most powerful pack in North America—and possibly the world—resided.
I didn’t live in the compound. It made my skin feel electrified. I didn’t like it.
Off Butterfield Lake was Woodman Road, made of dirt and gravel. If you followed Woodman Road all the way to the end, you’d come to a metal gate. And through the gate, deeper into the woods, was a small house.
It wasn’t much. It’d once been for loggers who had harvested the trees through the middle of the twentieth century. There were two bedrooms. A small bathroom. It had a porch with two chairs on it. The kitchen was efficient enough for two men, and that was it. That’s all it was.
It was enough.
Most of the time.
There were days when I needed the quiet. To be away from everyone else.
Days when I’d shift and run through the wildlife refuge, feeling the wet earth beneath my paws and the leaves slapping against my face. I’d keep going until I could go no farther, my lungs burning in my chest, tongue lolling from my mouth.
I’d be deep in the refuge, away from the sights and sounds of the compound. From the other wolves. From the witches. Even Ezra. He understood.
I’d collapse under an ancient tree, lying on my side, chest heaving. It was instinct that led me here, and I’d roll in the grass, turning over on my back and letting the sun warm my belly. Birds sang. Squirrels ran, and though I could chase them and eat them, I usually let them be.
I had a strange relationship with trees.
My mother placed me in one moments before my father murdered her.
I was six years old.
Memories are funny things.
If asked what I was doing exactly one year before on any given day, chances are I wouldn’t remember unless someone reminded me.
But I remember being six with a startling clarity.
Some of those days, at least.
