She needed to kill.
And soon.
The pink snow leopard was hungry. She’d been moving along the high valleys and the wide, ragged ridges of the Altai Mountains, unaware that she was passing between Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan on her search for sustenance. Nor did she know that she was traversing the Saylyugem National Park, established to protect her and her kind. Even as she had no fixed route in mind, her mission was clear.
This morning, as the pale, grey sun crept over ridges that revealed themselves one after another with majestic coyness, she sensed something in the rarified air. It drifted in from far away, from a spot deeper in the national park and lower down too. Not an area she’d ever choose to pass through. Too warm. Too much exposure. She didn’t know this, but the pr
