Excerpt from Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I move lightly past the other crates to the back of the truck's container. The rolling door's hinges rasp as they let me free. My boots hit the ground with a crunch. An eerie world, this night place. A carpet of snow reaches up for the moon, glowing for her. Naked trees cast in silver. My breath making clouds.

I rap on the driver's side window to wake the others. They've been sleeping in the cabin of the truck and blink blearily at me. Evan has a blanket pulled over him; I can feel the scratchy edge of it against my neck.

"Six is awake," I say, and they know what it means.

"This won't go down well," Evan says.

"They're not gonna find out," I say.

"Anne'll flip, Inti."

"Screw Anne."

There was meant to be press here for this, government officials and heads of departments and armed guards; there was meant to be fanfare. Instead we have been hamstrung by a last-minute motion meant to delay us until the stress of this prolonged journey causes our animals to die. Our enemies would have us keep them caged until their hearts give out. But I won't have it. So we are four—three biologists and one vet—stealing, moonlit, into a forest with our precious cargo. Silent and unseen. Without permission. The way it always should have begun.

There's no more road for the truck so we're on foot. We lift Number Six's container first, Niels and I taking a back corner each while burly Evan carries the front on his own. Amelia, our vet and the only local among us, will remain here with the other two containers to keep watch. It's a little over half a mile to the pen, and the snow is deep. The only sound Six makes is a soft panting that signals her distress.

A loon calls, distinct and lovely.

I wonder if it stirs her, that lonely cry in the night, a recognition of the same ancient call she makes. But if it does, then she doesn't reply in any way I can interpret.

It seems to take an age to reach the pen, but eventually I make out its chain-link boundary. We place Six's container inside the gate and head back for the other two animals. I don't like leaving her unguarded, but very few know where in the forest these pens have been placed.

Next we carry male wolf Number Nine. He is a massive creature, so this second hike is harder than the first, but he hasn't woken from his sleep so there is that, at least. The third wolf is a yearling female, Number Thirteen. She is Six's daughter, and lighter than either of the adults, and we have Amelia for this last journey. By the time we have carried Thirteen to the pen it's nearly dawn and exhaustion has set into my bones, but there is excitement, too, and worry. Female Number Six and male Number Nine have never met. They are not from the same pack. But we are placing them in a pen together in the hope they will decide they like each other. We need breeding pairs for this to work.

It's just as likely they'll kill each other.

We open the three containers and move out of the pen.

Six, singularly conscious, doesn't move. Not until we retreat as far as we can without losing sight of them. She doesn't like the scent of us. Soon we see her lithe form rise and pad out onto the snow. She is nearly as white as the ground she walks so lightly upon; she, too, glows. A few seconds pass as she lifts her muzzle to smell the air, maybe taking note of the leather radio collar we have placed around her neck, and then, instead of exploring the new world, she lopes quickly to her daughter's container and lies beside it.

It stirs something in me, something warm and fragile I have come to dread. There is danger here for me.

"Let's call her Ash," Evan says.

Dawn burnishes the world from gray to golden and as the sun rises the other two animals stir from their drugged sleep. All three wolves emerge from their containers into their single acre of glittering forest. For now, it's all the space they'll be given and it's not enough, I wish there didn't have to be fences at all.

Excerpted from Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy. Copyright © 2021 by Charlotte McConaghy. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.