*Flashback*
She came back in pieces.
Pain first. It arrived before consciousness, before memory, before the understanding of where she was or what had happened. Just pain — her ribs, her shoulder, the back of her neck where something had bitten deep enough to scrape bone. The pain was so complete that for a long, formless moment it was the only thing she was. Not a person. Not a wolf. Just a body cataloguing damage.
Then warmth. That was wrong. She hadn't been warm in weeks — not truly warm, not the kind of warmth that sank past the skin and into the muscle. But she was warm now. Firelight played against her closed eyelids, orange and shifting. She could smell pine resin. Dried meat. Woodsmoke — not the acrid smoke of a green-wood fire but the clean, steady smoke of seasoned timber, the
