The Sentinels When you come and break my heart, free my blood.

Dag laughed at her too-quick reply, seeing that, even if he was not exactly right, his jibe had certainly hit close to home. But then, as Dag expertly dodged his wily twin's attacks, the mood seemed to change all at once. The dark male's heart ached to see his sister's listlessness. She was a wolf of action - and had been since she was just a little girl.

"Remember when we would wait for Laerke to come home from battle," Dag sighed, tucking his head against Lotte's plush bossom, "and mother would tell us to go to sleep, but you and I would sneak out and run out into the tundra - so far that we couldn't even see the den mounds anymore?"

It seemed like so long ago, but when Dag thought about it, he realized that it couldn't have been much more than a year's past, if that. But they'd been so young, and the world so large, and when Dag thought of home, he thought of him and Lotte under a blue moon, running until they were out of breath.

"We should be together," he said softly. "Like then."