Sleepy Fox Hollow To the house in the pines where the road ends

In the interim, Wylla shifted in the snow, watching her breath fog out before her eyes. While travelling she'd felt nothing but the inexorable pull of her venture, and something akin to the relief of escaping a misfortune. Now that she was still, she felt a myriad other things: a dull cramping in her travel-worn legs, a sharper punch of hunger, and the rapid fluttering of unwanted anxiety in her belly.

It ratcheted up the moment Mahler became visible, and by the time he stopped in front of her, warm with blood, it was screaming at her to turn and leave. If Mahler's heart was racing then Wylla was in atrial fibrillation, breathless with the certainty that he'd changed his mind about allowing her to stay. It wouldn't surprise her. How could he, a purported general, tolerate the opinionated lashing of a subordinate's tongue with anything but utter disdain? Especially because she knew—and he likely did as well—that she couldn't easily quell it?

She sucked in a slow, rattling breath, made herself stand tall, and gave her report in a tone that was wooden and nearly scripted. I have patrolled the majority of the range. There are no packs forming in the mountains. I directed one wolf named Jigsaw toward Diaspora when he asked after a home. It was otherwise uneventful. The smell of blood was cloying and her hunger manifested the strangest desire to lick it off his fur. She refrained in spite of an audible growl in her belly. That is all.