Had it been a year since my own child had been born? It seemed so. Time had passed in a flurry of memories, the more pressing ones of tears and pain and a heart that had snapped in two with the death of Carnifex. I don't think that I will ever be able to forgive him for leaving me all because he wanted to defend my honor. It shouldn't have happened, none of it, but it had. A cruel twist of fate - the dagger that pressed deep inside of me but just missed my heart. That is how I had always lived my life. Born a runt and cursed to forever be small. It wasn't that I didn't like my body, I was a gorgeous creature when we got down to it, slender and sleek, but I wasn't strong. At this moment I wasn't even healthy. Exodus had helped to bring me food that one time and it had heartened me but then he had disappeared and I was lost once more, trying to care for Myrria and myself and growing weaker by the day.

God, I hated winter with a passion. It slipped past my sleek fur nestled deep within my marrow until I fairly quaked with it. I remember nights wrapped beside Carnifex, his body a blanket to mine, and sometimes when I pressed against Myrria I fell asleep imagining that warmth even as I froze inside. I feared that one day I wouldn't wake up and she would be left alone, the child I didn't want but that I now clung to so fiercely.

I am trying to hunt when I hear the call, a familiar call that beckons those around. I am desperate, truly, because I turn my back on the rabbit tracks I had found (no sight of the rabbit) and I head towards it in hopes that I might be able to seduce or steal a meal from whoever showed up. My stomach had long since lost the quaver of hunger but I knew once I got a taste of something I would be hard pressed to not ravish it and leave some for my daughter.

Yet when I arrive it is to see the two wolves sitting there by themselves without a scrap of food between them. It infuriates me in a way that I know is inconsolable and I freeze in motion, torn between my desire to leave them alone and to get out of this god forsaken wind. Finally I just let my body take over and I drift closer to them, slinking around the other side of the tree so that it will break the cold for a moment. I sit there then, tail wrapped tightly around me, pressed in on myself and still shivering and I glare with pink eyes, flecked with red, at the world around me. Maybe, I think, this will be my last winter, or maybe I'll give in and find a pack.