Chapter 2 - Ten Miles of Ice and Blood
The task was impossible. Dorothy knew it, but her heart refused to listen to her mind.
She dragged a thick, fallen birch branch into the clearing and used her worn pocketknife to cut long, heavy strips from the hem of her wool dress and her canvas apron. Working with frantic, freezing hands, she bound three thick logs together to form a crude wooden sled, lashed with strips of cloth and tough pine vines.
Rolling the giant wolf onto the sled took every ounce of strength she possessed. He weighed easily three hundred pounds—his dense muscle and heavy frame dwarfing her small body.
When she finally managed to lever his massive bulk onto the timber frame, she was gasping for air, her lungs burning in the freezing wind. The wolf gave a faint groan as his wounded shoulder hit the wood, but he remained conscious, his glowing yellow eye tracking her movements with strange intensity.
Dorothy tied the heavy harness of cloth around her own waist, took a deep breath, and leaned forward.
The first mile was sheer agony.
The sled cut deep ruts into the heavy powder, acting like a anchor pulling her backward down the slope. Every step felt as though she were dragging a boulder up a mountain. Her light boots offered no traction on the slick ice beneath the snow; she slipped, fell to her knees, skinned her hands on hidden rocks, and hauled herself back up using pine trunks.
By the third mile, the storm reached its terrifying peak. Visibility dropped to less than three feet. The cold ceased to feel like pain and transformed into a dull, terrifying numbness that settled deep into her bones. Her fingers were white and stiff; she could no longer feel her feet touching the ground.
To keep herself from drifting into the sweet, deadly sleep of hypothermia, Dorothy began to talk.
"You're heavy," she gasped, her breath rising in thick white plumes against the dark forest. " heavier than any barrel of ale I ever dragged into my father's cellar... You must have been a monster before someone shot you."
The wolf shifted slightly on the sled, his breath hot against her leg as she trudged just ahead of his nose.
"My mother used to tell me stories about the wolf spirits," Dorothy continued, her voice weak, fighting the roar of the wind. "She said the Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes. She said every shifter is given a gift—a wolf to protect them, to keep them warm... She kept waiting for mine to wake up."
She paused, slipping on a patch of black ice, her knees slamming into the frozen mud. She panted, staring down at her bloody knuckles before forcing herself back to her feet.
"My mother died when I was twelve," Dorothy whispered to the dark pines. "I waited until I was sixteen for my wolf. I prayed every night... I thought maybe my wolf was just shy. Or small. But nothing ever came. Just human skin. Just human bones."
She looked back over her shoulder. The giant wolf was staring up at her through the white veil of falling snow. His single open golden eye was wide, unblinking, fixed entirely on her face.
"She must have forgotten me," Dorothy said with a bitter, faint laugh. "The Moon Goddess. She ran out of wolves by the time she got to me."
A strange sound came from the wolf’s throat—a low, resonant rumbling that wasn't a growl, but a deep, vibrating rejection of her words.
Dorothy stopped for a second, wiping snow from her eyelashes. She gave him a tired, pale smile. "What? You disagree?"
The wolf let out a quiet, huffing sigh, his head heavy against the logs.
"Thought so," she murmured, leaning back into the harness. "Keep breathing, giant. If you die on me after I dragged you three miles, I'll never forgive you."
By the seventh mile, Dorothy had lost the feeling in her legs completely. She moved by mechanical will alone—one frozen foot in front of the other, pushing through waist-deep drifts. When her voice gave out from the biting cold, she began to hum. It was an old northern cradle song her mother used to sing while brushing her hair by the fireplace.
When the white frost turns the cedar red, And the moon hides low in her stormy bed, Sleep, little hunter, do not fear the night, For the wolf in your heart brings the sun's warm light...
By the ninth mile, the forest finally thinned out. Through the swirling curtain of white snow, she saw the dark, leaning silhouette of her father’s old disused barn—a solitary structure built on the edge of the abandoned northern pastures, miles away from the main tavern and the pack village.
"We're almost there..." she sobbed, her voice barely a rattle in her throat. "Look... the barn..."
At nine and three-quarters miles—barely two hundred yards from the barn doors—Dorothy’s body gave up.
Her knee buckled sideways into a hidden ditch. The harness snapped under the sudden jerk. Dorothy tumbled headfirst into the snow, her chest hitting the frozen ground with a brutal thud that knocked every drop of air from her lungs.
She tried to push herself up. Her arms wobbled, gave out, and she collapsed back into the soft, deadly white blanket.
"No..." she whimpered, her tears freezing on her cheeks. "No... so close..."
She couldn't move. The cold was invading her chest, wrapping around her heart like band of iron. The darkness at the edge of her vision pressed in, warm and tempting.
Just close your eyes, a voice inside her whispered. No contracts. No Silas Blackwood. No debts.
Then, she heard a sound behind her—a heavy, wet tearing of snow.
Dorothy forced her eyes open.
The massive grey wolf had dragged his ruined body off the wooden sled. Blood was pouring fresh from his side, staining the snow dark red around his flank, but he was moving. Crawling on his belly, dragging his paralyzed hind legs behind him, he forced his massive frame forward through the drift until he reached her side.
With a deep, agonizing groan, the wolf hooked his massive, heavily muscled foreleg around her shoulder. He pulled her against his body.
His fur was thick, coarse, and radiating a sudden, violent, unnatural heat—an alpha's internal fire burning through the cold. He pressed his massive snout into the crook of her neck, huffing his warm, metallic breath directly against her icy skin.
Dorothy gasped as the searing warmth flooded her frozen blood. She looked into his golden eye, inches from her own.
"You foolish thing..." she whispered through chattering teeth. "You're bleeding to death..."
The wolf growled low in his throat—a commanding, stubborn sound that vibrated straight through her ribs. He pulled back with his leg, nudging her body forward toward the barn.
Move, his golden eyes demanded. Live.
May you like
Dorothy gripped his thick, frosted neck fur with her stiff fingers. "Together," she sobbed. "We go together."
He pulled. She crawled. Inch by bloody inch, human and dying wolf dragged each other through the final two hundred yards of blizzard, until they hit the heavy pine doors of the old barn. Dorothy reached up, unlatched the rusty iron pin, and they both collapsed inward onto the dry, fragrant bed of old hay as the storm roared uselessly outside.
