"Mom!"
The scream sliced through the tension like a silver blade.
Georgia whirled around so fast her vision blurred, the world tilting on its axis as maternal instinct overrode all reason. There, haloed in the doorway by flickering torchlight, stood Kerria, her precious pup, her stolen child. The girl's golden hair hung in tangled knots, matted with leaves and what looked suspiciously like dried blood at the temples. Her too-thin frame trembled violently beneath a torn nightdress, bare feet scratched and dirt-caked from running. But it was her eyes, those wide, luminous eyes mirroring Georgia's own, that shattered the last remnants of Georgia's control. They held a story too terrible for words: terror warring with desperate relief, the haunted look of a child who'd seen the underbe
