Silver rested her head on my shoulder and huffed again. For a few seconds, I let my arms curve around her. Silver’s heartbeat. Silver’s warmth. Long before I’d stopped shrinking back from human hands, this had been contact, safety, touch.

I gave myself another instant, then stood. After a long moment, Silver exhaled loudly and stepped aside.

Humans, I could almost hear her saying. They’re so much work.

“You’re telling me,” I muttered as I made my way down the stairs. I was halfway out the back door before I sensed eyes on the back of my head.

Busted. I turned around. A ghost-white dog with ice-blue eyes sat three feet away, watching me with an intensity that would have set most people’s hearts to thundering in their chests. On paper, Saskia was a husky, but there was something wholly wolflike about her features that would have made most people think twice before holding out a hand.

I wasn’t most people.

I snapped my fingers, and the husky sprang forward. She came to a standstill at the door’s threshold, looking at me. I held up my right hand, accompanying the gesture with a verbal command. “Stay.”

Saskia stayed where she was, but her blue eyes tracked me as I began walking backward. When I got ten feet away, I began bouncing on the balls of my feet. Saskia’s ears flicked forward, but no matter how badly she wanted to give chase, she didn’t move.

Stay. I let the command stand as I dodged back and forth and began moving backward once more. Stay. Stay. Stay…

“Come!” I lowered my hand. Saskia bolted from the doorway, and the moment she did, I turned and ran, as hard and fast as I could. I made it to the edge of the woods before she caught me. She circled me and barked, and I bent down to play, rough-and-tumble.

Most people thought that training animals was about obedience and control. But in reality, the center of any search and rescue training program was play. For the dog, searching was a game. Animals who had a strong play drive would keep playing indefinitely—through ice and snow, over hard terrain, for hours upon hours—until the game was won.

Until they found their target.

That Saskia was playing with me now—that she would do anything to keep playing with me—was a minor miracle, given the way we’d found her. She’d mistrusted humans, and she’d had reason to.

“That’s my girl.” I stepped back from the game, and Saskia went eerily still, waiting for instructions. Waiting for round two.

“Feel like some exercise?” I asked her.

She let out one loud, sharp bark.

The tension that had been building inside me since the night before began to dissolve. I gave Saskia a wolfish grin. “Let’s run.”

* * *