Red Wolf

  ****

  After dinner, Boone slipped the mini disc Odin had sent into his tablet. He decided it would be safer than using the movie player in the suite. Neither Boone nor Delilah could imagine what was on the disc. With nothing but a black screen, both heard Odin’s booming voice. “Since you can never meet your family, I have brought them to you.”

  Boone looked at Delilah with a mixture of curiosity and fear. “I can never meet them?” Boone asked.

  “It must be a condition of the marriage. A way to protect Daddy and me,” Delilah sighed sadly. “I am sorry, Hooxei.”

  Boone took a deep breath and looked back to the screen. There was photo after photo of his sisters and brothers; photos of their families and their wolves. Boone recognized the emerald green eyes and was immediately cognizant of the connection. Large but silent tears formed as he realized the photos were all he would ever have of them. It was the family he would never be able to visit, touch or love face to face.

  Boone stared at the last photo. Two snow-white wolves, one with blue eyes and one with green eyes. He knew instantly which one was Gracey. “The Snow Wolves,” Boone sighed in a mixture of belief and disbelief. “They are real.”

  “Yes,” Delilah nodded.

  “Have you ever met them?” Boone asked. He had asked Delilah the same question back in Idaho, and she had answered no. Boone wondered if she had omitted part of the truth. He knew Delilah would not lie to him, but occasionally she did not reveal everything to him to protect him.

  “Not really,” Delilah confessed. “But I was at their wedding. Daddy sent my sisters and me to watch over them in case Rafer wasn’t killed in the Alpha challenge. He wanted us to ensure Gracey and Stone's survival." Delilah paused. "We watched from the hilltop. Daddy kept us cloaked from view. The wedding was beautiful. Gracey and Stone love each other as much as Hrolf and Ulrika did.”

  “Who are Hrolf and Ulrika?” Boone asked.

  “The original Snow Wolves,” Delilah explained. “Their souls live again and again. When Stone and Gracey die, their souls will be born into the new Snow Wolves.”

  “So really, they never die?”

  “They do for a while,” Delilah replied. “It was nearly 1500 years between the death of the original Snow Wolves and the birth of the modern day Snow Wolves. It is how legends are born.”

  “Someday you will tell me the whole story?” Boone asked knowing not to push Delilah for information.

  “Yes.”