Not many years after the Black Death ravaged Europe, a group of Teutonic knights was harried across the border into Poland by a monster. When the sorely-battered band of warrior monks begged succor at the fortress of a former enemy, he granted them shelter, but their vows forbade sharing any knowledge of their holy mission as Wolfjäger... wolf hunters.

Josef fought alongside his brethren, though he was still a supplicant, and had not taken holy orders. His grievous wounds were bound and tended by Maria, a woman of quiet beauty who, simply by existing, challenged his vows of chastity and silence. Not since he lost his Sarah to the plague had he been so moved by a woman.

Maria loved her family, yet knew she was apart from them in some way. Her stepmother had raised a harlot's daughter as her own, but what brought the look of fear into her eyes? Why did her father make her swear to never remove the silver cross he gave her? When a wild-eyed stranger, Darien, rescued her from an attacker he spoke in puzzles, saying she was like him; stronger than she knew, yet bound by silver. Should Maria's loyalty be to those who raised her, or to the birthright revealed through the stranger's trickery?

WOLF'S CROSS is the second in a series begun in Wolfbreed, yet is very much a stand-alone novel. The connection to the first book is only in the richly textured and finely detailed world Swann builds. It describes a time when men clung together against the wild and its mysteries, and their only answer to fear was to drive it out from among them to be destroyed. The story of Maria, caught between Darien, Josef, and her loyalty to her human family is a powerful one that will linger long after the final page is turned.