The tundra stretched like a shroud pulled taut over the bones of the world, snow falling in silent, relentless sheets that muffled even the howl of the wind. Pine boughs bowed under the weight of it, their needles black against the white, and hidden caves gaped in the hillsides like mouths half-forgotten by the earth itself.

Starling moved through the frost like a shadow without a body. Her silhouette left narrow trenches in the snow that filled again almost at once. Each breath plumed before her muzzle, thick and hot. Having paused at the lip of a frozen creek—or what could have been a creek if not for the depth of perpetual winter here—she felt her claws clicking against ice that splintered like thin glass. A low sound rolled in her chest, not quite a growl—more the sound of someone perplexed.

The wind shifted. Somewhere ahead, the faint crack of a branch under paw. Wolf-scent, sharp and living.

She thought of the woman from before—she thought of the trio of youth, too—but this scent was different.