Ravensblood Forest before the devil knows you’re dead

A wet-sounding gurgle accompanied each laborious breath as the singed puddle of smoke and shadow began at long last to respond — shallow breathing quickened; blistered and sloughing paws twitched faintly; shuttered pupils seemed to flicker back and forth beneath long-lashed lids. The fallen wolf was as deaf to the cries of the wolves she loved as she was to the voice of the stranger — but when her scruff was grasped between well-meaning and conciliatory teeth, a wild desire to flee threw aside the last remnants of her stupor. In one breakneck moment, the heap of ash and cinder became Lotte Ansbjørn — ungainly and weak, she lurched to a sternal position and tried to tear away from Dakarai’s gentle grip, but in less than half a minute she dropped her muzzle wearily to her paws, panting raggedly. It was not Dakarai she perceived as a threat but the fire itself, so when she turned her head to cough and spotted the sky-high flames, bloodied fluid flecking the sand at her forepaws, she ceased her frantic struggling and frankly stared.

“Do — Donnelaith — ” Her once glorious voice emerged from her ravaged throat in a hoarse croak that shocked and frightened her, and she turned from the inferno just in time to catch Chusi’s form vanishing in the distance and register Dakarai’s unfamiliar presence. A strange, feral urge to ward him off billowed within her aching chest, but she stilled it at the sight of Arturo — nestled tightly beside her with love and panic tangled together in his brilliant citrine gaze. She turned back to Dakarai: “Perhe?” came her cracked and guttural query, but before the dark wolf could answer Lotte nodded mute acceptance of his presence and turned in a state of utter vulnerability to Arturo. “Donnelaith,” she repeated, a sob hitching in her aching throat as she coughed and pressed the crown of her head into the Ceannasach’s chest for comfort. “Arturo — Arturo, kaikki on poltettu — Deirdre on poissa — kukkatanssija on poissa — Donnelaith on poissa!” she croaked brokenly, moisture leaking in ash-blackened rivulets down her cheeks. “Dagfinn, missä Dagfinn? Arturo, alä jätä minua — Arturo, se sattuu, sattuu — ”

The ragged, phlegm-clogged state of her voice mortified the terrified girl; idiotically she tried to escape its echo, staggering to her paws in the shifting sand. Mindless of her singed flesh and bedraggled appearance, she shambled vaguely in the direction of Teaghlaigh, her raw and sloughing paws leaving a trail of garish bloody prints behind her. She made it only a few feet before she allowed her legs to buckle beneath her — and then, forlornly, she did a very un-Lotte-like thing: she burst into tears.