Afraid. Afraid—afraid—afraid…
A sob caught in Evelyn’s chest. “I know, lovely. I am afraid, as well,” she whispered as she closed the gap.
Evelyn was finally close enough to the animal that she could have touched it. But she did not have the opportunity as the wolf abruptly kicked and yelped and tried to gain its feet.
Evelyn screamed and instinctively threw up an arm, but the wolf crumpled to the ground once more, its little remaining energy spent. Its ragged breaths squealed in its wide chest.
Hurts.
Evelyn drew a deep breath and moved closer to the enormous beast. Her leg throbbed and her heart pounded so that she fancied she could hear her ribs rattling together.
She saw the deep gouges in the wolf’s back and neck, the still-trickling stickiness on its muzzle and wide, black nose. But the ragged gash in the animal’s flank was the most dire—gaping, torn flesh revealing stringy muscle and a white chip of rib. Here, the blood flowed onto the snow.
How had it escaped when so outnumbered?
“Have a bit of a scrape there, did you, lovely?” she asked in a shaky whisper.
The wolf whined deep in its throat.
Evelyn looked back the way she’d come for the first time since crawling from her accidental shelter, and was so shocked at what she saw that, for an instant, she forgot her injuries and her fear.
It was…a cottage.
Of sorts.
Low, sod walls and a thatch roof poked out from beneath the snow on the bank behind it, and Evelyn realized she must have fallen through the smoke hole.
A cottage. Abandoned, obviously.
The wolf whined again in a series of short, breathy bursts and then Evelyn heard the chorus of howls from the wood beyond.
Her eyes sought the path of blood leading from the forest and she knew the gray beasts had likely torn what was left of Minerva’s mare to shreds and were now on the trail of the fallen black. Should they find the animal—and Evelyn, as well—injured and exposed as they were, Evelyn knew both their lives were forfeit.
She looked to the cottage door and then back at the black. To the door again, then the considerable mass of the wolf, trying to gauge the distance against her own meager strength.
The animal whined pitifully.
Afraid.
Evelyn closed her eyes.God, give me strength.Then she opened her eyes and without hesitation, laid a palm firmly on the black’s hip.
It flinched, whined again, but did not turn on her.
Deep in the forest, but closer now, gaining, the grays howled again.
Closing her mind to the fact that she was readying to take into her hands a deadly, wild, injured animal nearly equal to her own size, Evelyn slid through the snow closer to the black’s back, her hand never breaking contact with the animal.
She tried to steady her voice. “I’ll not hurt you. I’ll not letthemhurt you,” she promised.
The wolf’s ears twitched, but it did not move.
So, before she could think better of it, Evelyn snaked an arm around the black, leaned into it, and pulled up.
The animal gave a weak struggle and an even weaker growl, but Evelyn did not loose it. Instead, she quickly fished her other arm beneath the wolf and lifted it to her chest, crying out in pain as she did so. Her back now toward the cottage door, she dug in the snow with her uninjured leg until her slipper found purchase with the frozen ground beneath and she pushed with all her strength.
They moved perhaps an inch.
She hitched the animal higher onto her torso, clasped her hands together in a tight fist beneath its chest, conscious of the warm blood soaking through her thin cloak and into her kirtle. The black suddenly went limp against her and Evelyn thought her arms would rip from their sockets.
