Mira Softpaw's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Dawn cracked grey over the third morning. Mira had not slept. She watched Kira lace her boots by the coals and finally spoke the plan out loud — the wolves, the cub, the men who meant to take it. Kira listened without interrupting. When Mira finished, Kira nodded once. "Good. We hunt first." They moved low through the frost. Mira spotted the small white shapes near a hollow — three rabbits with thin ice horns, ears twitching. She put two down clean with her knives. Kira took the third. They knelt together and chopped the meat into rough pink chunks, packing them in cloth that quickly stained. The wolves' den opened wide in the mountainside, jaws of stone above a sand-pale floor. Mira crept close enough to smell musk and old bone. She set the first pile at the lip of the cave. "Small piles," she whispered. "Close enough to follow. Far enough to keep them moving." Kira watched her work and did not correct her once. They laid the trail in a long curve toward the clearing where the cub was caged. Mira placed each handful herself, reading the wind, adjusting for slope. Behind a stand of pines they crouched and waited. Yellow eyes appeared first. Then the bodies — twin-tailed, grey, silent. The wolves found the meat and came on. In the clearing, three men stood around the bound cub, arguing over a collar. They did not hear the pack until the pack was already among them. It was fast and ugly. Mira looked away once, then made herself look back. When it ended, two men were down and one was running. The wolves circled their cub, sniffing, licking, lowering their heads to it. Kira stepped out first, hands open, and the lead wolf met her eyes and did not charge. Mira stood at her shoulder, breathing hard. Kira didn't turn to explain the next move. She just said, "You already know." Mira's chest went tight and warm. Then, from the treeline where the third man had fled, a horn sounded — short, sharp, answered by another further off.