The Highlander. Heather Grothaus

relaxed again.

      Thank you, God, Evelyn said silently as she tended the animal. She’d probably spoken the phrase a thousand times in the last—how long? Three weeks? Four? Evelyn was not certain how much time had passed since discovering Minerva’s dead mare, but in truth, it no longer mattered. She felt she could never be grateful enough for the divine intervention that had brought Alinor into her life.

      Evelyn had thought she’d fallen into the very depths of the coldest, darkest hell after fleeing the gray wolves those many weeks ago. She’d landed hard on her right leg and hip and her breath had left her, as had her consciousness. When she had awoken, it was to a world of grainy darkness, a smell of rot and mildew, and to a screaming pain in her leg. She could feel cold, dry dirt and stone beneath her cheek and she wondered if she was dead, although she could not imagine who would have been about to bury her.

      But there had been no soil pressing down on her, and so after mustering the courage to move her battered body, she’d dragged herself blindly along the packed dirt until she’d reached a cold, crumbly barrier. Evelyn had pulled herself up into a seated position when the watery-sounding whine first reached her ears. Her body went rigid, her mind still gripped by images of gnashing fangs and blood arcing through snowy air.

      Her eyes traveled upward instinctively to find a ragged hole in the black above her, where foggy light filtered down. Was she trapped once again, this time in some sort of cave?

      The whining sounded again and Evelyn shivered, even as the tone of the cry pierced her heart.

      Hurts.

      She listened to the animal for what seemed like an eternity, until tears ran down her cheeks and she sobbed into her elbow. Her fear waged battle on her soul. Yellow eyes and a twisting, fighting, black body filled her mind, and Evelyn knew ’twas the black wolf who cried.

      Hurts. Hurts.

      Evelyn began to drag herself along the dirt again, feeling the moist barrier with her fingers.

      She touched rough wood and her palms skimmed up and down, testing its dimensions.

      A door?

      Her fingers caught on a rough L shape and Evelyn grasped it, pulled. Wood creaked.

      She could hear the wolf still beyond the door and she wondered if she was not opening the gateway to her own death.

      Hurts.

      She pulled harder, and a weak sliver of gray light sliced across her face—fading daylight.

      Evelyn grunted as she strained at the door and it dragged open at last.

      The giant black wolf slumped not three yards from Evelyn in the growing, dense dusk. The animal’s head bobbed and swayed on its thick neck, its muzzle pointed at the ground. One paw was held delicately in the air, and a wide path of crimson snow led to the animal’s hindquarters.

      Blood. The wolf’s blood.

      The beast raised its yellow eyes to Evelyn, as if just realizing it was being watched. It whined again, faintly, and tried to scoot backward in the snow, away from Evelyn.

      Hurts. Afraid.

      But the wolf’s injured paw combined with its obvious blood loss conspired against the animal and it fell sideways with a frightened yelp. It struggled to rise again for a moment, but then gave up, its sides rising shallowly, the bloom of blood widening.

      This animal had saved her life, of that Evelyn was certain. Although it might now mean her death, she could not watch it suffer. Would not.

      Afraid.

      Evelyn dragged herself through the doorway toward the wolf, her arms sinking nearly to her elbows in the snow, but she no longer felt the cold.

      “Please do not kill me. Please do not kill me,” she breathed over and over as she neared the fallen animal.

      Afraid. Afraid—afraid—afraid…

      A sob caught in Evelyn’s chest. “I know, lovely. I am afraid, as well,” she whispered as she closed the gap.

      Evelyn was finally close enough to the animal that she could have touched it. But she did not have the opportunity as the wolf abruptly kicked and yelped and tried to gain its feet.

      Evelyn screamed and instinctively threw up an arm, but the wolf crumpled to the ground once more, its little remaining energy spent. Its ragged breaths squealed in its wide chest.

      Hurts.

      Evelyn drew a deep breath and moved closer to the enormous beast. Her leg throbbed and her heart pounded so that she fancied she could hear her ribs rattling together.

      She saw the deep gouges in the wolf’s back and neck, the still-trickling stickiness on its muzzle and wide, black nose. But the ragged gash in the animal’s flank was the most dire—gaping, torn flesh revealing stringy muscle and a white chip of rib. Here, the blood flowed onto the snow.

      How had it escaped when so outnumbered?

      “Have a bit of a scrape there, did you, lovely?” she asked in a shaky whisper.

      The wolf whined deep in its throat.

      Evelyn looked back the way she’d come for the first time since crawling from her accidental shelter, and was so shocked at what she saw that, for an instant, she forgot her injuries and her fear.

      It was…a cottage.

      Of sorts.

      Low, sod walls and a thatch roof poked out from beneath the snow on the bank behind it, and Evelyn realized she must have fallen through the smoke hole.

      A cottage. Abandoned, obviously.

      The wolf whined again in a series of short, breathy bursts and then Evelyn heard the chorus of howls from the wood beyond.

      Her eyes sought the path of blood leading from the forest and she knew the gray beasts had likely torn what was left of Minerva’s mare to shreds and were now on the trail of the fallen black. Should they find the animal—and Evelyn, as well—injured and exposed as they were, Evelyn knew both their lives were forfeit.

      She looked to the cottage door and then back at the black. To the door again, then the considerable mass of the wolf, trying to gauge the distance against her own meager strength.

      The animal whined pitifully.

      Afraid.

      Evelyn closed her eyes. God, give me strength. Then she opened her eyes and without hesitation, laid a palm firmly on the black’s hip.

      It flinched, whined again, but did not turn on her.

      Deep in the forest, but closer now, gaining, the grays howled again.

      Closing her mind to the fact that she was readying to take into her hands a deadly, wild, injured animal nearly equal to her own size, Evelyn slid through the snow closer to the black’s back, her hand never breaking contact with the animal.

      She tried to steady her voice. “I’ll not hurt you. I’ll not let them hurt you,” she promised.

      The wolf’s ears twitched, but it did not move.

      So, before she could think better of it, Evelyn snaked an arm around the black, leaned into it, and pulled up.

      The animal gave a weak struggle and an even weaker growl, but Evelyn did not loose it. Instead, she quickly fished her other arm beneath the wolf and lifted it to her chest, crying out in pain as she did so. Her back now toward the cottage door, she dug in the snow with her uninjured leg until her slipper found purchase with the frozen ground beneath and she pushed with all her strength.

      They moved perhaps an inch.

      She hitched the animal higher onto her torso, clasped her hands together in a tight fist beneath its chest, conscious of the warm blood soaking through her thin cloak and into her kirtle. The black suddenly went limp against her and Evelyn thought her arms would rip from their sockets.

      She