Once There Were Wolves

Inti bathes and clothes Aggie and talks to her about the wolves’ progress. Inti is particularly interested in the female Number Six and the male Number Nine, who are supposed to mate and form a pack. Inti often talks to Aggie, but Aggie is unresponsive most of the time.

On Inti’s way to work, a black horse runs across her path. A man in a truck is following it through a snowy field. Inti follows him. Together, they see that the horse has walked onto an icy river, which is about to crack. The man walks with a limp and cannot retrieve the horse, so Inti wades onto the ice, ropes the horse, and rides it onto safe ground. Its leg is injured, which could mean that its owner will shoot it. Inti gives the horse to the man, who is not its owner, and tells him to be careful about driving onto protected land. He criticizes Inti’s project of rewilding the wolves, and she decides that she does not like him.

Inti recounts the summers that she and Aggie spent with their father in British Columbia. She and Aggie both felt at home there. Their father was a conservationist who taught them to respect and understand nature. He used to be a logger but had a change of heart when he encountered a massive Douglas fir and realized that trees are more valuable alive than as timber. Since then, he has dedicated his life to saving the forest.

The girls spent most of their childhood in Sydney, Australia, with their mother, who is a detective. She never tells them how she met their father or why they did not stay together. Unlike their father, who emphasizes protecting the earth, their mother focuses on the world’s harsh realities. She warns Inti that if she is too caring, she will leave herself vulnerable.

In Scotland, Inti and her team attend a town meeting to discuss the rewilding project. Most of the locals protest that the wolves will eat their livestock and harm their children. Inti’s Scottish colleague Evan explains that without the region’s natural predator, the ecosystem has fallen out of balance, and the forests are dying as a result. The farmers resent that priority is being given to protecting the wolves, which they believe will destroy their way of life.

After the meeting, an intimidating man named Red approaches Inti and warns her that if a wolf harms one of his sheep, he will kill all of them. Inti reminds him that they are a protected species; if he does so, he will go to prison.

Inti sees the man she met that morning, Duncan MacTavish, and he tells her that the horse’s owners are going to destroy it. Inti asks him to take her there, and when they arrive, she tells the owner that she will buy the horse. He charges her a ridiculous price, but she agrees anyway. His wife, Lainey, had left the gate open and the horse escaped. Inti can tell that Lainey fears her husband. The next morning when Inti returns to pay the first installment and retrieve the horse, she learns that Lainey is in the hospital.

The chapter opens with Inti describing their mother taking the girls to court cases in which husbands have abused their wives. Inti knows that her mother is showing them the worst in people to teach them a lesson, but Inti refuses to believe that people are bad. Her mother tells her that, if she is not careful, a man will abuse her and her children.

Inti visits Lainey in the hospital. She tries to get Lainey to admit that her husband Stuart abuses her, but Lainey refuses. Duncan tells Inti that Lainey breaks horses for a living, and the excuse that she was thrown from a horse is plausible. They cannot do anything to Stuart unless Lainey confesses, and Duncan knows that she will not.

Inti recounts how the girls were sent to live with their father in the forest after Aggie was expelled from high school in Sydney. She broke a boy’s nose with a copy of Shakespeare because he was bullying Inti. They were about 17 at the time, and when they arrived in British Columbia, they realized their father’s mental health had deteriorated. Aggie brought him food from the grocery store since his kitchen was empty, but he would not eat it, insisting instead that the girls learn to hunt and track.

Inti is a better tracker, while Aggie can shoot the animals. Inti spots her first wolf paw print, which her father tells her are rare. She decides then to learn about the mysterious nature of wolves.