Shadowwyn Moor relinquo

Every last cache brims with bounty that will feed seven hungry children. Relief collapses, her sigh is somewhere between an astonished laugh and a cry and she breathes what remains of the hunter in the air. When he calls it is distant; he is leaving, and the note of his song tells her it is perhaps for good. She pulls to her feet though it is not to stop him; he needs to hear gratitude from the wolves of Kvarsheim. He needs to know about Gunnar.

She finds him by the tall cast of his shadow beneath the cavernous, wind-picked sky- though he is not alone.

There’s an intensity in the hardened gazes hidden not even in the wedge of shadows. With a bristle of her ridge Tauris stalks cautiously out to the ranger and the unknown woman, ears attentive and tail lifting to half-mast.

"Germanicus."