The Ancillary Muse: #MFRWHooks The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo

It's Wednesday and time for the Marketing for Romance Writers Books Hooks mini hop! (see linky list below) Participants post 6-8 sentences from their novel. Today I'm offering a bit from The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo ~ (book 1 in the series - Ashkewheteasu)

Setting the Stage~
For 3000 years Ashkewheteasu held constant vigil at his wife's burial mound. Today he discovers the burial desecrated. What he's seeing is an archaeological inventory racing the clock to catalog the burial before the bulldozers come. There's an industrial park slated to be built there. Seeing his wife's bones comes as a shock.

My 8~

“Aiyanna my love, my heart. I have watched over you through time but I can watch no longer. Please forgive me, I have failed you….” His throat choked close. Swallowing hard, he whispered to the earth that half-covered his wife, “Again.”
Kneeling beside the dirt-encrusted bones, he pulled the cover away to expose them fully. The small bones of the baby he knew laid with its mother had dissolved in the acids of the soil. Gently digging through the loam between the exposed rib bones, his fingers found the bird stone, its cord long since returned to the earth. Holding it now, he remembered...