Once There Were Wolves

It is fall, and Inti is anxious because the landscape is not showing signs of renewal. She fears that Red and the others will use this as an excuse to hunt the wolves. A cow is discovered dead, and it is clearly a wolf attack. When the town learns that nothing will be done one of the townspeople, Colm McClellan, kills Number Fourteen, an elderly male.

At the Halloween/Samhain festival, they string up the Fourteen’s head. Inti is very pregnant by this point, but she is hiding it, and only Evan, Aggie, and Mrs. Doyle know.

Inti follows Colm to his house and smashes up his car with a crowbar. When he comes outside, she breaks his kneecap with the crowbar. She finds Fourteen’s collar in his shed, wipes her prints off the crowbar, and leaves. She calls Duncan and gives him Colm’s address.

She and Colm are charged and fined for their respective crimes. More livestock have been killed, and Inti’s team knows that it will have to destroy the wolf responsible for the attacks. Inti has tracked the Tanar Pack close to Red’s land, so one night she goes out to the forest perimeter to prevent an attack. She fires a shot over the lead wolf’s head, scaring him and his pack away. Red arrives and tells Inti that she should not be out there in her condition, indicating that he too knows about her pregnancy.

Colm comes to the cottage and breaks Inti’s window, frightening Inti and Aggie. Inti calls Duncan to help. He arrives and locks Colm and his friends in his truck. He meets Aggie for the first time, and she is fiercely protective of Inti. Duncan is about to ask if the baby is his, but Inti tells him to leave. Aggie signs to her not to let Duncan in the house again.

Chapter 24 is a short section in which Inti recounts her attempt to trick Gus by pretending to be Aggie. She sends him a text from her sister’s phone, meets him, and tells him that she is going to leave him. He responds that Aggie tries to leave him, he will kill Inti.

Later, Gus finds out that Inti switched places. Aggie plays it off like they were testing him, and he acts as if it were a joke. Aggie is trying to shift the blame away from Inti so that Gus will not harm her, and Inti escapes and locks herself in the bathroom.

Inti goes grocery shopping while the town holds a meeting about the latest livestock killings. There, she meets local children who are fascinated by her work with the wolves. They assure her that not everyone in town is against her.

Duncan is waiting by Inti’s car when she leaves the store, and he asks her if the baby is his. Inti tells him that she is giving the baby up, but Duncan tries to convince her to let him help her raise it. He tells her that he did not kill Stuart, but Inti does not believe him. She admits that she loves him, but she does not believe she can overcome the traumas that she and her sister have suffered.