Cierra:
The pack gathered at dawn.
The cold was the kind that bit straight through skin, the kind that made your bones feel hollow. Frost crusted the grass, brittle enough that every boot, every pawstep cracked the earth like breaking glass.
I kept my shoulders square, my chin high, though every breath set my ribs on fire. Pain was nothing new. Pain I could live with. What I could not live with was giving them the satisfaction of seeing it.
If they smelled weakness, they’d rip it wider.
The pit was already drawn: a circle of ash and stone carved deep into the frozen ground. I knew its weight. Yesterday it had tested my body. Today, it would test something far sharper.
The air was thick with smoke, the acrid sting of pine and cedar thrown on the fire that smoldered at the edge of the
