A strange lone werewolf finds its way to the home of the Wolf-Pass Pack but how can Alpha!Jensen save a starving and dangerous Were who wants nothing to do with his own kind? Jared finds salvation by the light of a Christmas Tree.
In the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, against the edge of the churning Nantahala, there lives a pride of creatures called the ailure -- ailuranthropes, cats with the ability to take the shape of a man. Their alpha, Jensen, has suffered a great loss, and is losing his sense of self and his direction. Not too far from them, another werecat, a human-raised runaway named Jared, is still trying to understand who, and what, he is. Grief has the ability to tear us apart, tear us down, but the ability to climb our way back out is always there, and the desire to leave behind our burdens is more than merely human.
