She circled with the wolves, patient and deadly with her long spear and loose hair. The wind tugged at it with an almost passionate intensity as though nothing pleased it more than running through the tangled locks. I stifled a pang of jealousy. When she struck, a part of me struck with her, staring up into the lowered horns as her spear took the elk in the chest. He sank to his knees, bellowing, and a wolf leapt for his throat. I saw black fur arrested in motion, and hot blood spurting out to continue the arc of his leap, only to end in a red mist across the snow. It was not my pup. Not yet, but I sensed her on the outskirts of the hunt, watching.

The Huntress retrieved the spear when the beast lay still, wiping his heart’s blood on the thick fur of his hide. It left a red stain against the brown. She met my eyes as she straightened, a flash of forest green that brought the rest of the woods into sharper clarity before she pulled out a long knife and began sawing off a haunch.

I had seen things killed before. A horse once that had broken its leg in the street, and more chickens than I could count. This was different. Those animals had not fought. They had trusted until their last breath, and sometimes chickens farther down the line had pecked at the blood and feathers of the fallen, oblivious to the fact that they too would soon share that fate. The elk had fought as if he planned on living, even though his death warrant had been signed the moment the wolves scented him. It was a curious thought. Had the Locklands known they were going to die when they saw the Huntress emerge out of the snow? Had that knowledge changed anything?

“You’ll want to get down,” she said.

I slid off, and she caught me, minimizing the impact of my frozen feet on the ground. I would have objected to her help had the bear been a horse and the Huntress been anyone else, but pride seemed silly somehow out here in the cold. The bear roared the moment I slid free, scattering the wolves, and I flinched as she tore into the carcass, shaking it as if it weighed no more than a kitten.

“It will be easier to let them feed here than to haul it all the way back to the keep,” the Huntress said, wrapping the haunch she’d cut free in a length of oilcloth. “And when they are done, the ravens and the foxes will feed, and I will have fewer bones to trip over in the stable.”

I listened, unable to wrench my eyes away from the visceral ripping and tearing before us. A few of the braver wolves darted in to snap up the scraps.