hill, and as soon as they were gone he slunk towards the den and slipped inside.

He started when he saw Kira’s limp form sprawled out on the stony floor. Her ocean-wave eyes flicked up to meet his gaze, and her eyebrows narrowed.

“You…” she gasped in a hating voice just managing to trickle venom. He knew she was remembering the time he had chased her and Dusty over the edge of a high precipice. He had grown to regret what he had done (the chase had only been for his own entertainment), but now was not the time to dwell in the past.

“Get up,” he commanded harshly.

She glared at him, unmoving.

“Get up,” he snapped again, nudging her quivering side with his pointed nose. She yipped knifingly, and Brenner took his nose away.

“Don’t you-think…I would-move…if I could?” she growled breathlessly, “I’m-all…messed up.”

Brenner glanced at her rollercoaster of a spine and her crippled leg. But he told himself to help Kira. He admired both Kira and Dusty for their grit and persistence, and he had already saved Dusty’s life; now he needed to save Kira’s. Besides, the pups needed their mother…and he could tell Dusty thought of Kira as more than just a friend.

“Wait.” Brenner gently pressed Kira’s head to the ground. He placed his front paws on her spine, and pushed. Sharp cracks and pops emitted from Kira’s spine as vertebrae and bone slotted back into place. Kira, though, shrieked at the top of her lungs. Pain sailed up and down her back along with the snaps and cracks. Brenner ignored her cries and leaned hard, cracking her back again.

As Kira whimpered after she was finished screaming, Brenner lightly ran his paws over her legs and other parts to see if anything else needed correcting. He gently guided bones back to their original position as Kira bit her lip to keep from making further noise.

When he was done, he backed away and said sternly, “Now. Get up.”

With trembling legs, Kira pushed herself upright and managed to hold herself there. “Wow,” she breathed. She shook dirt and grime from her coat, and winced when her muscles ached. “Ow…Thank you.”

“You’re lucky I know how to do that,” Brenner remarked, “Not every wolf knows how to set bones. I was a Healer in my pack.”

“What happened to your pack?” Kira asked. She had wondered how he had become a lone wolf.

But he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What does is you’re probably sore. Rest for awhile, so you’ll have enough energy to catch up with your friend and your kids.”

“Why are you doing this?” Kira asked, cocking her head.

Brenner grinned weakly and shrugged. “Maybe it’s guilt for chasing you off that hill…or I just know it’s not right for a mother to be separated from her pups. Now, rest.”

Kira smiled at him and obediently lay down, knowing rest was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Three days later, Kaila stood on the beach watching her parents talk while they lay on the deck of Balto’s boat. Even in the fading evening light she could see Jenna’s graying muzzle and tired eyes, and the old, defeated way Balto held himself. All of her family had taken Dusty’s death hard, and three months later she still felt a pit in her heart that hurt whenever she thought of her brother. Seeing how quiet and unnoticeable he had been, like a shadow at the edge of her life, she had never thought the plunging dagger of grief she had felt when she heard of his death would go so deep and leave such a mark. She cared more about him than she had thought.

Kaila turned at a swift movement at the edge of town, and recognized Lucas’ gray form as he slipped behind a house. Her eyes narrowed, and she found herself following him on silent paws. She had been suspicious of him for a long time. Lucas hadn’t seemed exactly sad when the mail team had gathered to pay their respects to Dusty’s family. Balto and Jenna had been too grief-stricken to notice, but Kaila had seen the smug gleam in Lucas’ eye even as the corners of his mouth turned down in an attempt to seem sorrowful. The very scent of him had even seemed a little odd, like he was trying too hard to hide his true feelings from sight or scent. Kaila hadn’t trusted him from the start, and his behavior added even more to her dislike.

She looked around the house Lucas had disappeared behind, and the tip of a silvery tail led her around the corner, where she lost him again. Kaila sighed in frustration and sniffed at the pawprints guiding her to a small side street. She stopped at the road where the pawprints were lost amid all the others stamped into the muddy snow. Disgusted with herself, she muttered, “Can’t even find one lousy mutt even when you see him moments before. You’re a great tracker, aren’t you, Kaila? A real bloodhound.”

She shook her head with a small smile and gave up with a shrug. Looking up at the darkening sky above her head, she instantly thought of the Northern Lights. Jenna had lit them every night for the past three months as a beacon of hope for Dusty’s return. Kaila knew it was a false hope, but it was better than no hope at all.

She trekked her way to the hillside and padded softly up to the broken bottles, quietly humming a few bars of ‘Reach for the Light.’

The colored glass seemed drained and lifeless as night cloaked its dark wings around the town, but then Kaila turned the knob of the waiting lantern with her teeth.

The glass soon captured tiny stars of light from the golden rays shooting out of the battered box. Kaila smiled in spite of herself and moved the broken pieces to the side with musical clinks. The stars inside the shards grew into a wave of soft color that burst out of its glassy prison and dipped and shimmered in front of Kaila’s shining eyes. Her heart raced, and she heard herself whisper happily, “Yes, reach for the light.”

“So now it’s the sister lighting the way for poor, DEAD Dusty,” a sinister voice chuckled, “How sweet.”

Kaila whipped around to see Lucas sneering at her, his face lit and shadowed in rhythm with the Northern Lights. He pushed her down into the snow, but Kaila stopped him halfway, her limbs trembling while she struggled to remain upright.

“You’ve been following me,” Lucas snarled, “And I want to know why. Do you want something?”

His paws pushed harder, but Kaila shoved him back a few steps with a heave. “Why would I want anything from you?” she growled, “Especially anything you have in mind!”

“Beats me,” Lucas said casually, advancing forward. He tried to press Kaila to the ground again, but she bit his leg, and dark droplets immediately fell to the snow. He jumped back, startled, but then his eyes smoldered into red-brown fire, and Kaila knew her time might be up.

She ducked as he lunged, and grabbed him around the throat. He wheezed and tore at the ground with his claws, but she only squeezed his neck tighter.

“You’re going to regret this,” he gasped.

“Hardly,” she shot back, but her grip loosened a bit as one of Lucas’ claws dug into her leg. Lucas ripped himself out of her grasp. They faced each other, breathing heavily.

“What really happened up on that cliff?” Kaila asked, certain now that Lucas was behind something.

“You know what happened,” he hissed, “We got up the cliff, Kira fell out of her harness to save the team, I kicked Dusty out of his harness-” Kaila gasped. Lucas grinned wickedly. “Oops.”

Something dark and deadly weighed down in Kaila’s heart. Dusty was dead. Lucas had killed him.

Lucas had killed him.

White-hot rage exploded through her, and the burning embers fueled her anger. She threw herself at Lucas with a cry that contained the rage of the eternal Fires Below, and Lucas, who had been expecting a weak and sniveling female he could easily toy with, gasped as Kaila smashed him into the snow. She began to take her revenge for her brother, with every drop of blood Lucas spilled.

Dusty looked up from his fallen position in the snow at the sound of Kaila’s wild cry. His thoughts and memories and three-day journey with the pups had overcome him so that he had collapsed in grief in the snow, giving up. Robin, Gail, and Silver huddled into his sides, shivering and whimpering. Yet the familiar call had struck something inside him, something from the past…

A stately white wolf seemed to appear before him in a whisk of crisp white flakes. His mind was fogged with exhaustion, yet he still managed to remember the stories Balto told of his mother, a wolf as white as the new-fallen snow.

“Aniu?” Dusty panted.

Both Dusty and Aniu turned at the sound of another pain-filled cry from Kaila.

“It is your sister,” Aniu told him, “She is in grave danger. Go to her. Keep the strength of the wolf, for you will need it to fight for your life and hers.”

Her golden eyes gleamed at him, and in an instant his whole body tingled as it flooded with a courage he never knew he had.

All of a sudden Aniu was swept up in a swirl of dancing snow as silently as she had come. Dusty was alone with the pups.

“Kaila?” he said, squinting into the night. From a ways off he spotted glimmering whorls of green, blue, and magenta, and two fighting silhouettes shown up against the colors. Dusty saw wolfishness in the first one, and he would recognize the second shadow’s owner anywhere. “Oh no,” he breathed, his chest tightening, “Lucas.”

He quickly stood and