I slept somehow as night stretched into morning. The lumbering stride never faltered beneath me, and the bear shifted her weight to catch me each time I threatened to slide off. Juniper cried with exhaustion and fear. Her sobs matched the rhythm of the bear’s stride, then subsided, and we ate the sausage and bread we’d been saving for the journey home. We both seemed to know that no matter what we found at the end of our ride, a few bits of blood sausage and brown bread would not make one bit of difference.

“Rowan.”

I closed my eyes and listened to the Huntress’s voice rise out of my memory, more real than the daylight around me.

“You look like your wolf,” she’d told me the morning after we’d lain together for the first time.

I had stared up at her, my limbs still tangled in hers and my body heavy with sleep, awed into silence by the magnitude of the change that had grown within me at her touch. Even the weak winter sunlight felt different. Brighter somehow, and yet less solid.

“You belong here. You’re wild, in your own way.”

I had thought of my city, with its comfortingly familiar maze of streets, and the sharp stench of sewage and spices and overripe bodies pressed close against the sea. That was where I had thought I belonged, but cold stripped away illusion. Sinew and bone and fire were all that mattered, and there was comfort there in the space between life and frozen death. Comfort, and purpose, and a freedom as fierce as winter’s fury.

“Rowan.”

The voice was wrong. I jolted awake as Juniper shook my shoulder, and the world slid back into focus. Before us stretched the lake. The bear paused on the shore, breathing out huge clouds of steam. Her muscles trembled beneath us, and I wondered what the journey had cost her.

Home, rustled the rose.

“Let’s go,” I said to the bear, but she remained poised on the edge, weaving her snout back and forth. One of the wolves trotted out over the ice, and then he too paused, sniffing the frozen surface. He returned to the pack with an odd, careful gait, and then Juniper’s gasp brought my attention to the line of figures struggling across farther down the shore.

“There’s still time,” she said.

“Go,” I told the bear, digging my heels into her ribs. She roared in response, rising on her haunches, and Juniper and I tumbled off into the snow. When I pushed myself to my feet, my legs weak and aching from the endless ride, the bear had loped off around the edge of the lake, avoiding the ice entirely.

“No,” I shouted after her. “Come back.”