Bearclaw Valley By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,

The panic hadn't quite set in. It might not for a while, at least while he was focused on the hunt.

Fraser Campbell loved to chase the rabbits that emerged within his family's spacious back lawn, but this was something else entirely. He'd gotten loose, wriggling his gangly frame through a depression in the earth under the fence. He'd spotted a deer, and something within him. . .snapped. The call of the wild, or so he'd heard it named.

He had never yearned for the wild but now, now, finding all the space in the world—no fences could hold him in. He didn't have to stop, didn't want to stop, and by the time the adrenaline faded, he was very far from home.

And, yet, he persisted. The thrill of the chase kicked in once more as a large hare rocketed past, and Fraser took off, baying like a hound. He did not chase to kill or eat but for some other reason entirely, one he couldn't name. Fun? Freedom? Simple instinct?

Whatever the feeling was, it was so heady that he had surged past well-marked wolf borders without a thought and soon found himself slowing—having been outrun—in the entrance of a vast valley.

His eyes rolled upward, staring at the rocky walls that now threatened to close him in.

Oh. There it was. The panic.