By Sue Denver
© Copyright 2025 by Sue Denver. All Rights Reserved
I was sitting in a recliner, listening to old Patsy Cline heartbreak songs when I just barely heard a rifle shot.
My cabin was small (one room) and super-insulated to keep out 40-degree-below-zero cold, so it should have kept out the sound. Except that I have extraordinary hearing.
I turned to my wolf-dog Skidi. Her ears were standing at attention and oriented to the west — which is where I thought the sound came from.
Yep — it was a rifle. Which was a big problem.
My cabin is in the middle of nowhere Alaska, surrounded by more nowhere — so the only firearm I should ever hear was my own.
Who am I? My name is Sara Flores and I’m a 5’ 7”, 30-something, with shaggy, dark hair. What you most need to know about me is I’m both a private investigator and a werewolf.
The werewolf part happened because a Lupiti shaman friend of mine on his deathbed transformed me four years ago. Then he died without telling me a damn thing about my new condition. I’ve come to believe he was the last descendant of Plains Indian tribes who carried this gene/virus/whatever.
I sometimes believe that I’m the last werewolf in the world. Nobody today believes they ever existed.
As for the private eye part — I wanted to do something good with my new abilities. My company — Last Chance Investigations — specializes in rescuing people targeted by assholes — usually rich ones. If you had poor assholes after you, a bunch of your friends could maybe get together and go beat the crap out of them. Problem solved.
But if you’re up against a human trafficking ring or a drug cartel, you’ve got bigger problems. The kind you might come to me to solve.
In the past two years my team and I have been shot, stabbed, run off the road and kidnapped.
But, hey, we’re still here and those bad guys aren’t.
Skidi was already whining at the door as I pulled on my “outside” clothes. It was frustratingly slow, because it included an anorak, thick ski pants, fur hat, thick mittens, and serious fur-lined boots.
I picked the white anorak, not the screaming yellow one as stealth was my goal.
I pulled on a polar-fleece balaclava that covered my head except for my face, then added a form-fitting face mask that covered me from right under the eyes to my neck. It had a built in breather and heat exchanger that warms the air before it hits your lungs. Snow-blindness goggles went over that.
Before you call me a wuss, I don’t see you stepping outside in what two weeks ago was 10 below weather. Not counting the wind chill factor.
I wouldn’t have needed any of this gear if I’d just transformed to wolf. But being in that form is not recommended when hunters are around.
Not that there should be any of them around. To discourage hunters adventurous enough to come way out here, I have clear “No Hunting” signs posted at every road or snowmobile trail that comes near my property.
I grabbed my Nosler 21 rifle, loaded with .375 H&H mag, and my snow shoes and went out the door.
In case you’re wondering what I was doing in an isolated cabin as far from humans as was possible without leaving the planet…
I’d come to Alaska to get away from a man.
The kindest, biggest-hearted man I’ve ever known, not to mention the best looking. And, oh, by the way, the man I’ve been in love with for the past three years.
Also… the man who is any day now marrying a “nice, Lupiti woman,” so they can have nice Lupiti boy babies so one of them can follow in his daddy’s footsteps and become the tribe’s priest when his dad retires.
I’ve spent the past month desperately wanting to punch someone.
Now I just might get my chance.
Although it was mid-April, the thermometer outside my door said it was currently zero degrees Fahrenheit. I quickly checked the wind — it was coming from the direction of the shot. It was also strong enough to swirl the latest dusting of snow lying on top of a three-foot-packed layer. It made that zero degrees feel closer to -30.
I gave Skidi the signal to stay with me — a pat on the side of my leg — and a finger-over-the-lips sign to be silent.
We moved about a hundred yards from the cabin, then I stopped and smelled the air. I turned west into the wind and even with my human nose I could smell a man. I frowned. Maybe two men. I looked at Skidi and her nose agreed.
We did not run directly towards the shots because, hey, I’m not an idiot.
I needed to know what we were facing. If the men were natives, taking down a moose to feed their family, I wouldn’t object.
But if anyone touched one of the wolves here… well… let’s just say he better not.
I’d only been up here for a month, but I already knew this land intimately. I knew where ridges, trees, or tall bushes provide cover and where you could see for miles. Fortunately the smells came from an area treed with white spruce and thick underbrush. From there I should be able to see better while remaining downwind of the hunters.
We reached the trees, then crept through a dense thicket of snow mounds covering shrub birch. Once we got as close to the hunters as possible while still hidden, I again inhaled the men’s scent. Now I knew they weren’t native. I smelled one of those ultra-expensive men’s colognes — with blackcurrant and oak moss in it.
I slithered on the snow-packed ground until I could peek around one of the mounds and see.
Yep, two men. Both of them were tall — at least six feet. That’s another sign they likely weren’t native. They wore expensive white cammoflague snow suits, white fur hats and orange-fading-to-yellow snow goggles with a big “O” on the side that said they were Oakley’s and cost close to $200 a pair.
They were drinking something out of flasks.
Then I smelled blood.
One of the men moved and I saw an animal lying dead at their feet. The fur was thick and white and now the smell told me it was a wolf.
Damnit!
I jerked back, my hands clenched and shaking.
I wanted to shoot them both. Badly.
I bought this land and was buying more to turn it into a wolf sanctuary. I planned to start on the paperwork once I hit 500 acres.
My clenched fingers cramped and I had to pull them off my rifle. Wolf hunting was legal in Alaska. Hell, you had the right here to seek out wolf dens and shoot the mama, pull out every one of her baby pups and shoot them too. You could massacre the entire family and get patted on the back for it.
Hence the need for a wolf sanctuary.
Skidi kept bumping me and I turned to her. She moved her nose to the trees just north of where the two men stood and she whined quietly. Her tail switched back and forth, not wagging but very, very distressed.
Frowning, I turned my nose to her indicated direction and inhaled.
Oh, shit. I stood up.
The snow in front of those trees appeared to be moving by itself. Looking closer I could see white furry bodies, slunk low to the ground. They flowed from the trees towards the two men — who were standing with their backs to the approaching wolves.
It was a whole pack of them. Eight. No, nine. Creeping closer and closer. This was not normal behavior for wolves.
I frowned and held my breath, scared for the wolves.
The first wolves were 10 feet from the men and closing when a very large, light-gray wolf came out from the trees and howled.
The men startled and began to turn, bringing their rifles around.
As if the howl were a signal, the white wolves leapt to their feet and flew at the two men, knocking them down into the snow. One of the rifles fired, but I didn’t see a wolf falter.
He’d missed!
A cacophony of snarling followed as nine wolves made the kills, then shoved each other out of the way to grab the best bites of meat. Both men struggled only briefly. Bright red sprays fell over the snow as their jugulars were ripped open.
I winced at the feeding, but a part of me felt the men had earned it by sport hunting with a high powered rifle and scope. And by killing one of their pack.
So sue me — it felt good to see the underdogs win once in a blue moon.
It’s just… wolves don’t do this. There have been only two humans killed by wolves in the last 20 years. And those wolves were probably defending themselves.
Wolves have survived despite all the human hatred they’ve faced by not being stupid. They run from us. At least… if they are given the chance.
So… how could this be?
Skidi nosed me, urgently. I turned to where she looked.
I’d forgotten about the huge gray wolf which had howled — almost as if he were signaling the attack. Now he was lying on his back in the snow, a pool of blood over his chest.
I fell to my knees. Two wolves were dead. On my land — which was supposed to protect them.
I looked at Skidi, who was quivering. Why was she…?
The wind carried the dead wolf’s smell to me. It was… unusual. It was… almost… human?
I saw the wolf’s body jerk and twist and… change.
A naked human man lay on the snow. Unmoving.
Holy shit!
With no thought at all to the pack of wolves, I leapt from cover and ran towards the man — my snow shoes digging into the snow and my heart in my throat.
The man was laying still. He should be getting up. Why wasn’t he? He’d been shot in the chest — that should be no problem for him once he transformed. I was always healed instantly.
He could not… I refused to believe… he just couldn’t be dead.
Fear squeezed my lungs until I was gasping air.
I fell to the snow beside him. No bullet marked his chest. He looked healed, but still he lay there. I checked and he had a pulse, although it was slow. His chest moved as he breathed.
I looked up and startled. Without a sound, his wolf pack had moved to surround me. Their nostrils flared as they inhaled my scent.
Their red muzzles tilted quizzically at me.
I grabbed Skidi and pulled her to me. Hoping to protect her.
Although they smelled like natural wolves, I said, “Are you… like him?” I looked from wolf to wolf. “Can you help him?”
They showed no human signs of understanding my question.
Instead, one by one they stuck their noses under one of my arms and inhaled. Yes, even through all the clothes they could scent me. Wolf noses are that good.
They had to smell the wolf in me. Maybe they recognized me as someone with the same smell difference as this man.
The male and female wolves closest to me turned their heads and returned to the trees. The others followed. The whole pack vanished into the bushes as though they were never here.
Leaving me and Skidi with the unconscious man. And the remains of the two shooters, which I would have to come back for. Not the body parts — they’d be feeding the predators around here. But the clothing and rifles would need to disappear.
It would take us maybe a half hour to drag him back to my cabin. His body temperature would be hotter than a human’s, but still… that’s a long time naked in this ice-box landscape.
He had almost no facial or body hair, except for his head which sported a long mess of all-white hair. It fit his face, which was aged with deep grooves, and fit the slack skin over his well-muscled body.
I’d believed the werewolf gene/virus/whatever had its last gasp among Native Americans in the late 1800s. Although… Europe used to be a hotbed of werewolf rumors.…
I stopped myself. I wasn’t going to solve that question now. Or maybe ever.
He’d been a huge wolf, but as a human he wasn’t any taller than I am. I stripped off my clothes and dressed him in them. I was most worried about his hands and feet so I carefully covered them.
I called my wolf and gritted my teeth through the excruciating transformation from human to wolf. It always felt like it took hours instead of the single minute it did.
At least, thank god, all those myths were wrong — I didn’t need a moon to transform. A full moon transformation made my whole body tingle like the best sex ever. But it wasn’t required.
For the slog back to the cabin, Skidi and I each grabbed an arm in our jaws and together we dragged him across the ice.
The entire trip back, my head kept screaming at me, “I am not alone.”
He had to survive.