My name is Aaron Briggs, and in my first life, I didn’t have anyone I needed to take care of except for myself.

I was an Alaskan, and I loved my home state as much as my small town of Talkeetna where I was born and raised.

I’d only ever left Talkeetna to study at the university in Juneau, and once I graduated, I moved right back. Growing up, I learned to trap and hunt most of my food and forage when the season and weather allowed for it. As an adult, if I wasn’t working, I was either skinning something, hiking somewhere, or reading about people who skinned things and hiked somewhere.

Occasionally, I was out cruising at an altitude of thirteen hundred feet in my buddy’s old Cessna 180, though.

Jimmy’s dad had left him the plane years ago, and as soon as he got his pilot’s license, our hunting excursions expanded to every corner of Alaska. Of course, we could always hitch a ride with people from work before that, but Jimmy liked to belt System of a Down lyrics whenever he was heading back to his campsite, and not many people could stand the habit.

Only I knew it was his way of making sure he never got caught by a grizzly like his old man, and I could respect the inclination. A couple girls we brought along sometimes thought it was hilarious, so Jimmy played into this like he had a goofy side, but I knew he was scared shitless of getting eaten by a bear.

It was incredibly rare for something like that to happen, but once you knew someone it happened to, you got a little louder after quartering game and drove a little faster to get back to where you came from.

I was Jimmy’s main hunting buddy, and during my last December in Alaska, we were just getting back from another trip to his cabin out at Lake Louise. Jimmy never failed to suggest the same celebration for either of our birthdays, and I would never turn down the invitation. Even if it was always snowing for his birthday, our long weekends out at the hunting cabin had sort of become a tradition, and it was just within the cutoff for caribou hunting season, too.

“Did you see those three Arctic Cats?” Jimmy asked through the intercom, and I craned my neck in the direction he pointed. “That’s the High Country Limited I told you about. Those are probably the same idiots who piled up last week. Look at those jumps they’re taking.”

“Could be,” I sighed as I eyed the snow machines far below.

“Rich assholes,” Jimmy muttered. “Those fucking High Countries are $17,000 apiece, and their daddy got them three.”

“They’ll pile up by the time we get back from Nelchina,” I snorted, and Jimmy sent me a broad grin of agreement.

We both worked for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, and we were heading out on an assignment first thing tomorrow in the Nelchina Public Use area. That meant two weeks living at our frigid campsite, but this was only the first trip of a two-year long research study taking place deep in the heart of the Unit 13 Intensive Management Area.

A few months ago, the Board of Game approved aerial wolf hunting in Unit 13 for the first time in over thirty years, and given the recent outcry from the public, our team would have their hands full trying to make sure our findings were as thorough as possible.

I got assigned to head of our research team, and we were lined up to work in stages tracking wolf movement, moose population growth, and any violation of hunting regulations in the area.

Personally, I’d never had a problem with the wolf harvest, and I didn’t know many hunters who did, so long as it was kept on the local level. My grandfather and I had taken part in both the hunting and trapping seasons ever since I was eight, and I was raised to respect the need for a delicate balance of predator and prey in the arctic. That was part of why I went to college to get a job with the ADFG, but instead of becoming a game warden like I intended, I ended up as a wildlife biologist instead.

Enforcing codes in the field felt less involved than tracking the population density of species and the effect on the environment, but now that Unit 13 was reopened to aerial hunting, complaints were coming in from a specific point of view.

From where I sat right now, I was looking down on the Nelchina basin area, and I saw three different packs roaming around within thirty minutes. Two of them I recognized on sight because the leading male in one pack had a distinct blue tinge in his tail, and the other was one of the largest groups I’d seen since I got the job.

Last winter, that pack reached twenty-nine timber wolves in all, with only two of them being elders, and their hunting party was always the most extensive in their region. Why the leader and the warriors were all out on the move at this time of day, I wasn’t sure, but since the rest of their pack weren’t among them, I guessed they were looking for a safer spot to settle in for a while.

“There’s the Susitna pack!” Jimmy said as he nudged me a few times.

“Yeah, I see ‘em,” I confirmed. “Sixteen moving north.”

“Still at maximum capacity,” he mused, and he let out a whistle of approval. “Bet they outrank the rest come spring, just like last year. Those puppies are hardy as hell!”

Jimmy whooped so loud, my headphones cut out, and I chuckled in response.

Part of me hoped the Susitna pack lucked out this season since their size had always impressed me, but I knew there was a good chance they’d be ten or twelve wolves short by spring time. Then again, they’d held out this long, and packs as strong as theirs were part of the reason aerial hunting came back to the table.

The Department of Fish & Game was charged with ensuring the moose population was kept at optimum levels in this area to accommodate the hunters, but from my own research, it sounded like aerial hunting hadn’t strictly been proven to achieve the best results in the past. Sometimes, the population of ungulates boomed, and sometimes it dropped through the ground the next season. Too many elements came into play in surroundings as harsh and diverse as these, and really, the wolves weren’t the only factor to consider.

Bears were the most likely to prey on moose calves, but there were also cruel winters, disease, and migration to consider, and all of these contributed to the balance. The wolves were commonly singled out, given their population was estimated to reach as much as eleven thousand across the state sometimes. So the wolf harvest made sense on the local scale because there were more Alaskans relying on wild game than the environment produced naturally. With wolves nowhere near a risk of endangerment here, we needed to even out the playing field to accommodate all the predators.

According to a pretty vocal locality, aerial hunting was taking it too far. Not to mention, every wolf brought in its own bounty, and the added cost of a hide in trapping season was a big draw.

“Hey, I’m heading to Latitude as soon as I get all this meat handled,” Jimmy told me through his intercom. “You coming out?”

“No, not tonight,” I answered.

Jimmy shook his head, but Talkeetna airport was coming up, and he was too busy checking in with air traffic control to complain yet. Then he took us around to the north, circled east, and brought us down on the one-eight airstrip, and I smirked as I caught sight of my black GMC parked over at Jimmy’s tie-down spot. Then I snorted to myself because I didn’t even see his white pickup over there at first, and it really was a miracle it hadn’t been flattened yet.

There was a good foot of snow on both, but my baby stuck out like a sore thumb, and I could have picked her out in a lineup of twenty others if I had to. It was the same pickup I’d been driving since high school, and her rear bumper was warped on the right side. She also had three dents on the left front fender from the blacktail I hit when I was seventeen, but I hadn’t hit anything since then.

I didn’t know if it was because Jimmy’s truck was white, but he must have hit at least four blacktails in the last year alone. Luckily, he was a better pilot than he was a driver, at least.

We even managed to beat the snow here by a matter of minutes, so I owed him a hundred bucks, but he didn’t seem to remember the bet as he cut the engine. He just tore his headset off and knocked me hard on the arm.

“Come on, man, this birthday isn’t over!” Jimmy insisted. “Shawna said she’d be at the bar, so you know Vicky will be, too.”

I didn’t have to look over to know he was waggling his eyebrows at me, but I didn’t feel like explaining to him yet again that Vicky wasn’t much of a draw anymore. Her only interests were drinking and plastering on too much makeup, and not surprisingly, conversation with her got old real quick. Maybe I was too picky, but I couldn’t help hoping sex would be better with a woman who could string a few sentences together without saying “like” ten times. Or, you know… did anything interesting in bed at all.

I set my headset aside and opened the door, and when I came around to the other side of the Cessna, Jimmy had a stubborn look on his face while he blocked the door to the cargo pod.

“It doesn’t matter who’s there,” I told him. “I’m not going out tonight. I’ve got stuff to do.”

Jimmy stared at me while the snowflakes piled up on his hat. “But you love Vicky!”

“I do not love Vicky, I fuck Vicky,” I clarified, and I crouched to open the cargo pod myself.

“Same thing,” Jimmy snorted.

I shook my head as we both hauled a couple game bags out of the pod, and I chucked them into the snowy bed of my truck while Jimmy did the same with his own set.

“Dude, we’ve been out at the lake for days with no warm bodies around,” he groaned on the way back to the Cessna. “How can you shut yourself up in your cabin on our last night of freedom before we head out on assignment?”

“Easily,” I muttered. “I’ve gotta close up my place before tomorrow morning, get this meat squared away with Larry, get my gear set for Nelchina, and enjoy a decent night’s sleep without you snoring loud enough to hear you through the walls.”

Jimmy rolled his brown eyes as he grabbed two more game bags to cart over, and even though I’d spent three days with him in honor of his birthday, I still felt kind of bad for taking a pass on drinks at Latitude. Not too bad, because he knew everyone in the whole damn bar, but a little bad on account of how whiny Vicky would be.

He’d be stuck listening to her bitch about where I was for half the night.

“Besides,” I casually continued as I dropped another couple game bags in my truck, “if I go to the bar, I’ll end up leaving with Vicky, and it’s your birthday, not mine.”

“Shawna’s always down to clown anyways,” Jimmy said with a shrug.

“Exactly,” I chuckled, “but you know Vicky hates being left out of a celebration, and there’s only one way to shut her up about it.”

Jimmy’s expression went slack as I closed up the cargo pod and climbed in through the pilot’s door, and he was still shell-shocked when I finished hauling my cooler out from behind the seats. Even when I shoved it into his arms and went back for my fishing gear and rifle, Jimmy hadn’t moved a muscle, and I got the impression he was imagining the glory moment where he walked out of Latitude with a woman on each arm.

Eventually, I just stacked my survival kit on the cooler and grabbed it back from him.

“Y-You don’t think,” Jimmy finally stammered as he clutched at his heart. “I mean, the two of them wouldn’t… not with me. With you, maybe, but I’m just--”

“Just the birthday boy,” I pointed out.

“But I’ve never… I-I don’t even know what I’d do with two women,” Jimmy admitted while I closed up my tailgate, and I headed for the hood as he dogged behind. “Twice as many women to handle? W-What if I get confused? Or tired? I’m fucking tired already! But an opportunity like this doesn’t come along too often in a man’s life, and it won’t be my birthday again until next December. That’s a whole year of regret.”

“True,” I agreed, and I stooped to unplug my engine block heater and wrap it up so I could head home. The snow was coming down in fat flakes now that clung to my black Carhartt and hair, but to look at Jimmy, you’d think nothing in the world existed except two sets of tits in his hands at once.

He was slack-jawed and staring off across the airstrip the whole time I cleared the snow off my windows, but when I dropped into the driver’s seat, he suddenly grabbed the door before I could get it closed.

“How do I even approach the topic?” Jimmy asked with wide eyes. “Have you ever been with two women at once?”

“Nope,” I sighed, and I started the engine to get her warmed up before I dusted the snow off my beard. “Why don’t you just relax and see what direction the night goes, alright? Worst case scenario, you sleep with Shawna, and Vicky calls you an asshole for suggesting a three-way.”

“You have to go to Latitude tonight,” Jimmy decided. “At least help me steer the conversation in the right direction. It’ll pique their interest more if you bring it up, and Vicky’s way less annoying when you’re there. Then you can say you need to take off, and I’ll slide up to the plate and make it all better.”

I smirked and shook my head. “Listen, make sure you’re not out all night over this. We’ve gotta meet the team in Nelchina by nine in the morning.”

“You sure you’re driving?” Jimmy checked. “I don’t mind flying you out to Glennallen. It’d save you a couple hours.”

“That’s alright, it’s a good drive,” I said with a shrug.

Jimmy cocked an eyebrow. “You know your truck doesn’t miss you when you’re gone, right?”

I ignored the statement.

“Suit yourself,” he muttered. “I’ll meet you there at nine. Well, not at nine. I’ll definitely be late, but I’ll be there.”

“Right,” I snorted. “Hey, take care of that blade, too. Don’t think I didn’t notice you never wiped it off after those trout this morning.”

“Shit, I forgot,” he mumbled as he glanced down at the hunting knife on his belt, and a few crusty chunks of fish guts were lumped at the top of the sheath. “I really appreciate it, honestly. I know you don’t make many these days, but this is a banging blade! I’m not bothering with my other one from here on out.”

“Glad you like it,” I replied. “Happy birthday. I better get going, though. It doesn’t look like this snow’s letting up anytime soon.”

“Drive safe, man,” Jimmy sighed, “and thanks again for coming along, and the knife.”

“Good luck tonight,” I chuckled, and when I finally got my door shut, Jimmy grimaced through the glass like he’d already been shot down by the two women.

Still, in all likelihood, he stood a decent chance of succeeding. He wasn’t the most well-spoken guy, and he tended to get less charming the more beers he drank, but compared to a lot of other regulars at Latitude, he was a promising option.

I sent him a final nod through the frosted window as I cranked the heater up, and I backed out from the tie-down area while Jimmy headed off to get his plane covered. At this point, I felt like I’d had a chill for the last three days after holding up in his drafty cabin at the lake, but taking a break to hunt and ice fish for a few days was always worth it.

Between the two of us, we caught thirty lake trout there, and both of us bagged our yearly caribou on our first day out. This haul would fill out the last of my freezers at home too, so I’d be well-stocked until summer came around.

Still, I had a limit for how long I could listen to Jimmy belt every song on Mesmerize above the drone of his snow machine, and three days put me past that limit. Tomorrow morning, we’d both be heading out with our field team, and then it’d be two straight weeks of tracking collared wolves with six other guys who snored even louder than Jimmy.

Shutting myself up at my own cabin was all I wanted to do right now, and I was looking forward to a night of genuine warmth and quiet again.

It was only three in the afternoon, but the sun was setting now, and it wouldn’t rise again until a little after ten in the morning. I had a long dark evening ahead of me once I made it home, but unlike some of the locals I knew, I was grinning at the prospect.

I had about eighty pounds of deboned meat to hand off to my neighbor so it could age a bit while I was gone, and I hated leaving town without reorganizing my hunting shed for the next trip out. Plus, I was only a hundred and fifty pages shy of finishing the book I’d been working on before we left for Lake Louise, and I had every intention of addressing this tonight.

I stopped at the liquor store on the south end of Talkeetna on my way home, and after I unloaded a few trout for the clerk to bring to his wife, I dropped my twelve-pack beside my cooler and headed down to the winding and icy lane that led to my grandfather’s old cabin.

It wasn’t much compared to a lot of the places in this area, and it wasn’t the kind of accommodations a woman would swoon over. There was no heater, and the black bears roamed through the yard regularly, but it was more than enough for me.

The A-frame cabin had been in my family for a few generations, and it was the only place I’d ever called home. The open living area took up the entire first level with the kitchen along the back wall and the bathroom through a door on the right, and since the loft I slept in was only closed in by a railing, the wood stove heated the whole cabin in under an hour. Even on the coldest days, I never had to bundle up in the place, and from my bed, I could see the Aurora Borealis, or northern lights, through the skylight despite the forest that encroached on all sides.

But the biggest draw was the smokehouse I’d built out back last summer. There was officially no limit to the amounts and kinds of jerky I could create now, and while Vicky had rolled her eyes at the news, Jimmy was just as stoked as me when I showed him the completed project. I practically lived on salmon jerky that summer, but this year, I intended to break the mold a bit. I’d heard good things about alpaca jerky from a guy I met at the airfield in Anchorage, and musk ox jerky would be on the menu as well.

My stomach growled at the thought as I parked my truck in the darkened forest outside the cabin, and the moonlight through the clouds was just enough to see by as I stomped up the snowy steps of my front deck. As soon as I got beyond the entryway, I took a deep breath in, and the musty smell of old cigar smoke made me smile on my way to the wood stove.

It would smell like cigars in here for the next hundred years, but the way the scent played off the smoke from the stove was one of the better things about coming home. I got a fire raging first thing so it wouldn’t be forty degrees in here by the time I finished up outside, and then I turned on the floodlights and headed back to the yard.

Only minutes after the lights turned on, I heard my nearest neighbor start his snow machine, and I was just lining my fishing pole up beside the other five I owned when his headlights flashed on the shed door.

Then there was a loud crack, and I grimaced as I recognized the tinny clang of my rear bumper getting plowed into by the old guy.

Again.