I sit seething in silence for an indeterminable stretch, fantasies of retribution playing out in endless, vivid loops behind my eyes. The restless wolf-spirit has been stoked into full, frothing hunger once more - yearning to taste the coppery tang of its tormentors' lifeblood on its fangs.
At some point, Ava begins to stir fitfully beside me. A piteous little whimper escapes her cracked lips as she instinctively curls tighter in on herself, doubtless reliving her own torments through the fractured lens of sleep's cruelties.
The heartrending sound momentarily punctures my reveries of vengeance with a lance of cold clarity. Despite the insatiable, predatory furnace blazing to life in my core once more...I can't allow its roaring hunger to consume what infinitesimal shreds of tenderness an
