Sixteen year old Christene Me'lar is hardheaded and stubborn, but when her Keep is attacked and her father sends her to her room and out of the fighting she resents it. When her father is killed and her brother and five more men are changed, by a blood wizard, from young men to lobos, right before her eyes, she feels that it is up to her to not only escape the keep, but find her brother and his men, in the middle of a snow covered forest and to the wizards school on the other side of the kingdom, with no experience of survival in the wilds. Fortunately, her father's captain, Captain Hardy, feels it is his duty to get her to the safety of the capital and keep her safely hidden from the blood wizard, Otten. He has to learn to work around her hard-headedness to teach her what she needs to know to stay alive while learning the ways of the cruel world. Will all her trials and hardships change her from a caring young girl to a scared girl who may lose herself in the cruelty of men? Will she get her brother and the rest of the lobos to the wizards in time to change them back to men? Or will she be too late?