Alabama, 1887. An elderly enslaved woman knelt in the mud while a wealthy plantation owner kicked dirt into her face. She did not flinch. She did not cry out. Her silence made him angrier. He raised his boot again. Then the howl came. Deep, guttural, close. The kind of sound that makes grown men freeze. Something massive moved in the darkness beyond the torch light. Eyes like molten gold watched from the treeline. The old woman whispered two words that made the plantation owner's blood run cold. My son. But her son had been dead for 15 years. Everyone knew that. What they didn't know was where his spirit had gone or what it had become or why it had returned tonight. Her name was Alma. She was 63 years old. Her back was crooked from decades of cottonpicking. Her hands were twisted like tree roots. She could barely walk without pain shooting through her knees. The Thornhill plantation sat 12 mi outside Montgomery. 200 acres of cotton fields. A main house with white columns. Slave quarters that leaked when it rained. 17 enslaved people still worked the land even though the war had ended 22 years ago. They stayed because they had nowhere else to go. Because James Thornnehill owned everything for miles. Because leaving meant starving because men who tried to leave were found hanging from trees. James Thornnehill inherited the plantation from his father. He was 35 years old, clean shaven, always wore a black suit. He believed slavery was the natural order of things. He believed God had made some people to serve and others to rule. When the Emancipation Proclamation came, his father had laughed. When reconstruction ended, his father had celebrated. Now James ran things the same way his grandfather had, with violence, with fear, with total control.Alma had been born on this land. She had picked cotton since she was 5 years old. She had watched her mother die in childbirth. She had buried three children before they turned 10. Only one had survived to adulthood. His name was Thomas. He had been tall, strong, quick with numbers. He could read, though that was forbidden. Alma had taught him in secret using a Bible she had stolen from the main house. Thomas had disappeared 15 years ago. He was 19 years old when it happened. One day he was working in the fields. The next day he was gone. James Thornhill's father said Thomas had run away. But Elma knew better. She had found blood on the barn floor. She had seen the fear in the other worker's eyes. Nobody talked about what really happened. Talking meant dying. Something else had appeared after Thomas vanished. A wolf, massive, black fur, golden eyes. It was seen near the plantation at night. It never attacked the enslaved people. But three overseers had died over the years, mauled, torn apart, found in pieces. James Thornnehill doubled the night patrols. He set traps. He hired hunters. The wolf was never caught. It was never even seen clearly, just shadows, just howls, just the aftermath. Elma believed her son's spirit lived in that wolf. The others thought she was crazy from grief. But she felt it. Every time the wolf appeared, she felt Thomas near her, watching, waiting, protecting.