Free Open Arms by Marysol James

government-sanctioned permits that allow hunters to legally shoot way more wolves than other animals, like bears or mountain lions. Lots of people hate ‘em, and there isn’t enough being done to really change how they’re seen.”
    “So… this one beat the odds, right?” Julie said. “Survived somehow, and got all the way down here, and is still in one piece. I’d say we have a duty to protect it, if we can.” She looked at the others. “What do you all think?”
    Everyone nodded except Maria.
    “Maria? You still worried?” Rob asked.
    “Yes,” she whispered, shifting under all the eyes turned her way. “But I’m sure you’re right.”
    Phil smiled at her. “Yeah, well. Jake and I aren’t experts by any stretch of the imagination. So this morning I called a friend of mine to come by and look around a bit, give us her thoughts. She knows a lot about wolves, and has been trying to get them reintroduced here in Colorado. I’ll have her talk to us after, OK? You can ask her anything you want.”
    “OK, good,” Maria said in obvious relief.
    Phil looked at his watch. “Kim will be here in about twenty minutes. I’ll bring her around, introduce you all to her. You can talk to her then. Alright?”
    Everyone nodded and got to their feet.
    Julie, Jake, Tammy, and Phil walked outside together and looked around. Mattie came down the stairs of the main building and joined them.
    “Mattie, do you know anything about wolves?” Julie asked her. “You’re from Montana originally, right?”
    “Yep,” Mattie said. “And what Phil said in there is just about right, about where I come from. Back home, folks are scared to death of wolves killing their livestock, and farmers and ranchers just shoot on sight, most of them.”
    “Have you ever seen a wolf?” Tammy asked her. “Up close?”
    Mattie leaned against the wall, crossed her arms loosely. “I did, once. When I was a small girl – maybe seven or eight years old.”
    “What happened?” Phil said.
    “Oh, I was sneaking around way past my bedtime, wandering around the forest at night and just being a dumb kid, you know. And this gigantic wolf just appeared in front of me. Stood there and stared at me, not moving a muscle.”
    “What did you do?” Tammy asked.
    “Froze up. Stopped breathing. Thought about dropping dead on the spot from fear.”
    “Yeah, understandable,” Jake said. “So what did you actually do?”
    “Waited. And the wolf – it was just so beautiful, I remember that. Its eyes shone in the moonlight and it was so… so… calm , somehow. Just sitting there, almost challenging me to be brave and stare it down. And I did, and after a minute, it just turned around and walked away.”
    “Wow,” Julie said. “It never even moved towards you?”
    “Not one inch. It just waited, and I waited, and then it was all over.” She looked at her spellbound audience. “I never told my Daddy, ‘cause I knew if he knew about the wolf being so close to the house, he’d track it and shoot it, just on principle, and I didn’t want that. I had looked in to its eyes, you know, seen its soul, almost. After you look at another living creature like that, it takes a damn hard person to kill that creature. You have a bond, and it’s not that easy to treat the other’s life so cheap.”
    Jake flashed back to David Reid, Julie’s father, dying in his arms. Dave’s mint-green eyes – the eyes that stared at him from Julie’s beautiful face every single day – had shown Jake his soul as he lay there. Jake knew what Mattie meant about that bond making the other person’s life more valuable, more personal. When Dave died, Jake thought that he’d die too.
    The sound of a car engine broke the silence and everyone looked down the long, winding dirt road to the main gate. A blue pickup was driving slowly towards them; it passed the corral and climbed the hill from the stables to the main building. The truck pulled up a few feet from the group, and Phil