Chey awoke with sand in her mouth, her hair matted and sticking to her face. She remembered very little, though she understood vaguely what had happened to her. She had turned into a wolf.

Oh God. She was just like him. When he scratched her leg—oh God. He had infected her with his curse.

Her head hurt too much to put that thought in proper order. Everything hurt. Her body felt weak and ineffectual. She was freezing cold.

At least that made sense. She was naked, after all.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them hard. A bad shiver went through her and her arms shook wildly, uncontrollably. She was wounded, wasn't she? She looked down at her ankle. There wasn’t even a scar there.

Oh God. Oh God. He had—he had destroyed her, he had—healed her, somehow, but at what price?

She ransacked her brains, trying to remember what had happened. She had transformed into a wolf. And then what? Something bad. Something violent had happened and she’d been badly hurt. Only now she was completely healed.

Chey slowly looked down at her left breast. She’d had a tattoo there, had it done when she was sixteen. Sometimes she regretted getting it, other times she thought of it as a badge of her determination, her will. Most of the time she was barely conscious of it. It was there every time she looked in a mirror, every time she got dressed in the morning and every time she got undressed for bed. The tattoo had become part of how she saw herself, part of her body.

It was gone. Completely gone, as if she’d never had it done.

She thought of Powell and his fresh face. Only his eyes showed his real age. Would she be like him? Would she stay young-looking forever but with eyes crinkled in moldering rage?

Or would she die of hypothermia on the shore of the tiny lake? The shivering wasn’t stopping. Her body kept shaking until she felt like she was having a seizure. The cold sand burned the soles of her feet. Her teeth chattered together so sharply she thought they might crack. She needed to find shelter. If nothing better presented itself she could dig down into the sand, bury herself in it to trap in her body heat. And then what, she wondered? Did she hunker down and wait for the Mounties to come save her?

Oh God. Even if such non-existent Mounties did come, would they find her in human form, or as a wolf? Would she attack them? Oh God.

A truck’s horn honked some way off. She jumped in surprise and shouted “Hey, over here!”, then immediately thought better of it. It had to be Dzo in that truck and he had to be honking for her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be found. He might take her back to the cabin and a warm fire. Or he might let Powell cut her head off with a rusty axe.

“Lady? That you?” Dzo’s voice said, cutting through the trees. “Hey, come on, we’re not going to hurt you. Not now.”

Chey had a bad choice to make. The only people in a hundred kilometers who could help her were the same people who had tried to kill her. She could hide—or run. And either die in the frozen woods or live as—as a wolf. Too much. Too much to think about. She stood up and waved and shouted until she heard the truck’s horn again, closer this time. She ran through the woods, her arms clutched around her breasts and her pubic hair, and shouted for help. Eventually she found the truck and she pulled her arm away from her breasts to wave. She covered herself quickly again when she saw Powell in the bed of the truck glaring at her. He was wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket. Dzo drove the truck with his mask on.

Powell stood up in the bed. “Truce,” he said.

“What? I’m naked and freezing. Don’t play games with me,” she replied.

“I want to call a truce. We stop fighting and try to get along. Okay?”

She didn’t reply—but what else could she do? He tossed her a bundle of clothing and a green blanket. He looked away just long enough for her to struggle into her pants and shirt. Dzo didn’t turn away, but he didn’t exactly leer at her either. She got the sense that she looked about the same to him naked or dressed. When she tried to climb up into the passenger seat though he shook his head and pointed at the bed with his thumb.

“Wolves in the back,” he said. “I can never get the smell out of the seats.”

Her face perfectly still—her soul too twisted up to let her feel anything—she climbed into the back. Powell stared at her openly but didn’t say a word. The truck growled to life and bobbed and rolled forward along a path that had never been designed for vehicular traffic. She had to hold onto the side of the truck or be thrown around in the bed like loose cargo. She hunkered down in her blanket and tried not to look at anything. Eventually she stopped shaking so much.