She kicked again, pushed at the ground. And again. Over and over she crooked and then straightened her leg. Her muscles screamed, burned. She began to weep.
After what seemed an eternity, the doorway was at last at her back, a red path of blood spread cleanly over the crushed and rutted snow before her.
And the gray wolves burst from the woods.
With a final, scrambling shove, Evelyn slid into the cottage. She kicked the springy door closed and held her foot against it even as it shuddered, jarring her leg to her spine. She screamed in both pain and surprise.
One of the grays had thrown himself at the door with a furious snarl.
The black in her arms stirred and Evelyn let it slide to the ground. “’Tis all right, lovely—we’re safe,” she breathed. “We’re safe now.”
She spied a length of rough-planed wood leaning against the wall in the dim light of the hut, as well as the crude brackets embedded in both the door and the sod walls to either side. Without removing her bracing foot, she reached for the plank and stretched up to mate it with the brackets.
The door shuddered again and Evelyn skittered backward in the dirt. She felt a warm wetness on the back of her palm and snatched her hand to her bosom with a cry before looking down.
The black stared up at her through glassy, clouded eyes.
It had licked her hand.
Now, Evelyn hummed as she laid a fresh piece of damp moss against Alinor’s side and held the spongy mass in place as she slid the other wide length of rose-colored cloth—remnants of her ruined kirtle—under and around Alinor’s midsection. She fastened the rather fine linen bandage in a stiff knot and then, on impulse, tucked the ends into a pretty bow.
“Fetching,” Evelyn said, leaning back to inspect her handiwork.
Alinor’s thick tail thumped the dirt floor twice.
Evelyn ruffled the wolf’s fur and then rose stiffly, gathering up the used strips of cloth and then dropping them in a bucket near the door. While she set to laying more peat on the fire, Alinor, too, gained her feet and crossed the hut to enter one of the cottage’s odd indoor pens. The black lay down on the fresh pine boughs Evelyn had piled within and promptly closed her eyes.
The fire smoking in earnest now, Evelyn pulled the remainder of the cooked meat from the spit and laid it next to her dagger—its tip now broken and jagged—on the narrow plank set into the rear wall. The afternoon light was fading into an early evening and she made mental note not to forget the snow bucket when she and Alinor went out to seek their final relief. After that, they would barricade themselves in for the night.
The two already had some semblance of a routine to their days in the primitive shelter, one of gathering snow for drinking and washing, fallen branches to supplement the dwindling pile of ancient peat, and of harvesting meat. Evelyn would tend the wolf’s wound, and as the animal and Evelyn regained their strength, they took to walking in ever-widening circles around the cottage, looking for forage. Most days they returned empty-handed. Sometimes they would stumble upon a few nuts, only half rotted. Once, Alinor nearly caught a rabbit.
But they only explored when the sun was near its pinnacle, for the grays owned the forest from dusk till dawn, and even now they still stalked the hut and its occupants. Each night, after the door was closed and braced firmly, Alinor would lay in the rickety, narrow box bed at Evelyn’s side shaking, her ears pricking at the minutest sound, hackles raising when the grays called from the woods, taunting them. The beasts had nearly killed Alinor once, and they still wanted her. Hungered for her. Evelyn herself could still clearly see the grizzled gray leader in her mind—how he had looked into her eyes as if he’d known her, had been waiting for her to venture into that part of the wood…
Thoughts of the gray devils made Evelyn skittish, and so she jumped when Alinor gave a low growl. Alarm raised the hairs on the backs of Evelyn’s arms as she turned toward the door.
Surely ’twas too early in the day for—
Alinor shot to her feet with a bark, staring at the half-open door, her hackles raised in a prickly ridge above her bandage.
Evelyn frowned. Blasted beasts! If it was the grays, there would be no snow gathering, and no way to relieve themselves for the whole of the night, save the crude bucket. She stalked across the floor with a frustrated sigh, ready to close and bar the door.
But before she had reached even the fire pit, the door slammed against the wall, the frame instantly stuffed with a large, wide—
Man!
Alinor lunged with a snarl.
Chapter Two
Conall thought for an instant that he had gone mad.
One moment, he was charging through the hut’s door, sword drawn, ready to oust an ambitious squatter, then in a blink, he was on his back on the hard dirt floor, the largest, blackest, most ferocious-looking wolf he’d ever laid eyes upon pinning him to the ground.
The wolf’s pearly, pointed teeth were bared, the short, bristly hairs of its lips brushing Conall’s. The beast’s head was nearly as large as Conall’s own, and hot spittle misted his face with the wolf’s every growling breath.
The first thought that entered Conall’s mind was: How could a wolf start a peat fire?
And when he saw the ivory angel’s wary face peer down at him from over the wolf’s head, Conall was certain he’d gone completely over the brink.
