"This is a stupid idea," Timberly said. "Just for the record."

Morgan couldn't completely disagree. The further they moved from the comforting light of the village campfires, the darker it got, and the spookier it became.

She glanced up at the star sparkled sky. No light yet along the eastern horizon. The air felt cool and still in a way it only got in the late part of the night. Maybe three o'clock? Four? Her eyes were starting to get gritty from tiredness. She'd only gotten a couple of hours sleep.

As she was the most familiar with the area, Leah led them back the way they came. They moved without light, not wanting to destroy their night vision... or let whatever it was out there know they were coming.

Right now in the dark, their 'hunting party' felt small and insignificant.

She both wished Lucas was there and was glad that he wasn't. He was always a steadying presence, and he was funny without being cynical like Timberly.

But if there was real trouble, he would not be able to run away.

"I wish Colton were here," Morgan mused.

"Really? Why?" Timberly asked. "He's a dumb meathead."

"Yeah, and he has the upper body strength of a jock who only thought about football for the first seventeen years of his life," Morgan said. "I don't want him around for the conversation. I want him for his big arms."

"What do the size of his arms have to do with the hunt?" Al asked. "His claws are as dull as yours."

"Nothing. They're just nice to look at," she grumbled, rubbing at her tired eyes.

Timberly snorted out a laugh, getting the joke even though she only heard half of it. Leah added nervous giggles. Morgan bit back a smile, too.

Much sooner than she expected, they made it to the opening in the trees that led to the edge of the meadow.

Al stopped with his nose high in the air.

"What is it?" Leah squeaked.

"Someone set a scent trap," Al said.

"A... scent trap?" Morgan repeated.

Al sent her an exasperated look. "Something dragged in plants of different scents and rubbed them all over its territory to cover their own scent. Flowering plants, ripening fruit, and small animal carcasses. This was why I could not smell what it was before—I thought the wind wasn't with me."

"Something is trying to mask its scent," Morgan translated. "Sounds deliberate. Like someone who can think for themselves?"

"Super genetically enhanced smart tiger," Timberly stage whispered. No one laughed.

Morgan looked ahead. The trees ahead were dark. The moon had set and the triangle of trees ahead was dark and shadowed, like the open mouth of a predator.

"It would take time to create a scent trap, wouldn't it?" she asked.

Al bobbed his head in affirmative.

"Then this isn't an overnight stay. It's a home or lair." She looked at Timberly. "Here." She handed her multitool to the other girl, the blade already out. She had her own pocket knife and out of the two girls, Timberly was the more aggressive.

Then, with her shovel in one hand, spade side up and the handle down like a ceremonial staff, she stepped forward. She hoped she looked more impressive than she felt.

Stopping at the edge of the clearing, she flipped the shovel and jabbed the spade down so that the tip bit into the soil as if she were marketing her spot.

Yellow Crest Raptors dealt a lot in body language. Maybe the whatever-it-was did, too.

This is my territory, and you a visitor, she thought.

"Hey! Hello?" she called out, eyes sweeping right and left into the darkness. Standing there in front of the wall of darkness, she thought that maybe a torch or something wasn't a bad idea. Yes, it would destroy what little night vision she had, but it would have made her feel better.

There was no answer, but there weren't any sounds of crickets or other night creatures, either. The darkness ahead had a presence. She didn't need Al's low warning growl to know that something was out there. All the hairs on the back of her neck said the same.

She took another step forward toward where all her instincts shrieked held danger.

"Hello? Uh, I come in peace."

"Did she really just say that?" Timberly asked in an undertone.

Morgan ignored her. "My name is Morgan. I'm a human being, and you're in our range." She lifted her chin defiantly as if her heart weren't at a full gallop in her chest. "Come out and explain yourself."

A low growl bubbled out of the darkness, just to the right of where she had been staring. It sounded distinctly Blood-Wolf-ish.

Run away! Run away! Her pounding pulse screamed. It was too easy to imagine some unknown horror leaping out at her out of the black. Or worse, if she turned, teeth closing over the back of her neck.

She gritted her teeth—her blocky, weak, human teeth, what was she thinking? This was a stupid, stupid, stupid idea.

She was going to bolt. Her legs were going to make the decision for her. Just as she was about to turn, she felt more than saw another presence come up from behind her. Al.

His head level with hers, he added her voice to her own. "We can sense you out there. Show yourself, coward! Murderer of chicks and eggs! You don't scare me!"

That was a blatant lie. His voice warbled on the end, but his presence gave her strength.

Morgan slammed the tip of the shovel down again.

"That's right! Come out. Right now!" Raising her free hand, she pointed to the darkness and then brought it down, right in front of her. Hopefully, some gestures were universal.

There was the snap of a stick and the darkness coalesced into a shape. A little taller than Morgan, it came forward on four paws with a muscled, dark furred blue-black torso. The head itself was doglike, though the skull was larger to fit a bigger brain and the ears were stiff and upright, overly large like a fennec fox. It could have almost been cute if not for the fact it was showing every row of pointy teeth—and look at that, it had two separate rows in its bottom jaw, like a shark.

"Oh shit, oh shit..." Timberly said, in time with Morgan's own thoughts.

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"That's a Blood Wolf?" Leah's voice was sharp with building panic. Morgan hoped she wouldn't run. It was a bad idea to run from a predator.

The Wolf glared at them, large ears folding flat as it uttered another growl. Deeper than Al's and far more threatening.

Al's feathers bristled along his body, and his return growl was lighter, more of a hiss with that dangerous rattle. Morgan rested a hand on his arm in a signal not to attack. Not yet.

Then, taking a deep breath, she took another step forward.

The wisest thing might have been to throw aside the shovel, but it was literally her only weapon. You don't run from a predator, but you don't show your defenseless underbelly either.

She put a hand flat against her own chest. "Morgan". Then she looked the creature in the eye.

The wolf growled something and made a slashing motion. It had very humanlike hands, though the fingers were tipped with claws that literally whistled through the air.

She wasn't going to give up that easily.

"Morgan," she repeated, touching her own chest again. Then, without breaking the Wolf's gaze she gestured to the side. "Al." Again, her own chest. "Morgan." Then she pointed at the Wolf and waited.

It regarded her with hostile eyes. Hard to tell in the low light, but she though they might be gold in color. Its lips were still peeled back and it said nothing.

"I don't think it's working," Leah said cautiously.

Timberly let out a breath. "Maybe its name is 'growl'."

"We have to find some way to communicate," Morgan said. "We need to trade languages with it."

"You want to bring it to the heart of your village?" Al said in disgust.

"It won't be like the Stone Seekers. If it's this close, it knows we're already there."

Al's growl was pensive. He didn't disagree. "How?"

Faced with the reality of the wolf, intimidating it back to the village was not going to happen. "There's a saying: A picture is worth a thousand words."

Time to take a chance.

Taking a chance the wolf wouldn't see it as a sign of submission, she dropped her gaze to the forest floor. Like Donut's village, the land was a little rocky but it was manageable. She started scraping away leaves with the side of her shoe to reveal soft earth underneath.

The wolf's growl deepened and it barked something at her—those were definitely words, though Morgan had no idea what it was meant to be.

"Hold on for a second." Her words didn't matter either, only her tone. Within a few seconds, she cleared out a large area. Then she dragged the tip of her shovel across the ground to make a line. The knowledge transfer device was an orb sitting on top of a metal trapezoid base. An easy enough shape to recognize—and the wolves who had attacked the Stone Seekers had been after it.

She made the first line of the base with her shovel.

The growling cut off. Morgan looked up just in time to see the wolf charging at her, so fast it was a blur. Only its teeth were in focus, and those were aimed right for her neck.

It was as if lightning had struck through her veins, freezing her limbs in place. One of those slow-motion nightmares where she watched death come for her and was trapped in molasses, not able to move a muscle.

Luckily, she wasn't alone.

Al moved, quick as a striking snake. Throwing himself forward, he crashed into the wolf. They both went over in a tumble of feathers and fur.

Immediately, Timberly rushed forward to jab at it with the end of her spear.

"STOP!" Leah shrieked. Like Morgan, she seemed too horrified to act. "Stop, don't hurt him!"

It was the raw fear in her voice that did it. As if the connection snapped back into place between her body and her brain.

Al, for all he was about Morgan's height, was light and as brittle-boned as a bird. The wolf had managed to come out on top of him. Al was snarling, cursing, trying to bring his claws up to kick like a cat but either there wasn't enough room or the wolf didn't care about deep scratches.

Its dog-like head turned to snap at Timberly's spear, breaking the shaft right above the point.

Timberly yelled and stepped back.

No time to think. Morgan brought her shovel down—the wrong side. The handle struck full across the wolf's back.

The wolf howled and whipped around, bright gold eyes staring at her.

It gave her a few seconds to change her grip on the shovel. She had once played softball as a kid, and the only thing she'd learned from it was how to hold a bat properly. Ignoring the flares of pain in her wrist, she brought the spade end of the shovel around as hard as she could and hit the wolf right in the side of the head.

The shock of it ran up her wrist like fire and she dropped the shovel, curling over.

The wolf crumpled, limp.

Spitting, growling, Al tried to shove it off, but the body was too heavy.

"Help me!" Morgan yelled, stepping forward to grab a thick hank of fur. Her other hand was a pulsing agony, she held it to her chest. The wolf was dead weight—shockingly heavy.

Dropping what was left of her spear, Timberly came to help. Leah did too. Together, they were able to roll the wolf aside

Al scrambled up, covered in leaves, twigs and mud. Some of his longer feathers were sticking wildly out of place.

"Are you all right?" Morgan demanded, coming to check him over.

"Foul smelling thing!" Al danced in place in agitation, slit iris's expanding and contracting. He looked like he wanted to take a bite out of the unmoving creature.

"Al, are you hurt? Are you bleeding?" Morgan couldn't tell in the low light. Was that blood on his chest or mud? She brushed the darker patch away. Soil.

"I'm fine." He held up one wing in disgust. "It's going to take months for these to grow back." Some of the flight feathers on the equivalent of his elbow were bent and didn't return to their normal position when he fluffed and resettled his feathers. One was snapped and leaking blood. "I'm going to look ridiculous with half my feathers missing." He complained, swishing his tail in irritation.

Like, three feathers were broken, but Morgan was too relieved to be annoyed over his vanity.

"No one around here will notice," she promised.

"Is it knocked out?" Leah's voice broke in, high-pitched. Only then did Morgan realize she hadn't checked at all.

"I don't know. It's..." she trailed off, looking down.

The wolf lay very, very still. It's golden eyes were half-open and stared at nothing.

Oh no.

Life wasn't a cartoon. People couldn't usually take a shovel to the head without serious damage.

"I guess... I guess wolves have two weak points," she said and suddenly wanted to sit down or maybe throw up.

I did that. I just killed somebody.

Granted, it had been trying to kill Al, and herself. Probably Timberly and Leah, too. It might have been involved in the attack on the Stone Seeker city and the Yellow Crest massacre, and it was most likely scouting around to try to attack the humans next, but...

"Are you sure?" Timberly asked. "It's an alien."

"What?" Morgan asked weakly.

"This is not from Earth." Her voice was that too-calm sort of flat people got when they were trying really hard not to freak out. "And maybe I've seen too many monster movies, but I don't think I'll be able to sleep again until we separate the head from the body."

Al stopped messing with his bent feathers and cocked his head at Timberly. She got the impression he found this to be an excellent idea.

"FIrst of all, that's gross. Second of all, I didn't want this to happen." Her throat tightened unexpectedly, making her next words high. "I didn't want to kill it!"

"It attacked us," Al said. "It would have killed you."

"I know, but... Why?"

"For the same reason it attacked my people. It's what they do."

"Morgan, it was self-defense," Leah said softly. "No one blames you."

She shook her head. "No. I meant—I know that, but why did it attack? If this was a scout, its people will know that something is wrong when it doesn't return. It didn't even need to stay here. Plus, it chased us away the first time. Why didn't it run off and grab its friends or whatever when it saw us coming back?" She flashed to the large wolf she'd faced off against in the Stone Seeker village. It had been larger than this one, gray furred, more muscular. The muzzle had been blunter and the ears a touch smaller.

Did that mean...?

Still holding her throbbing wrist to her chest, she bent, ignoring her rising nausea and terrible guilt to examine the... body.

"Are you petting it?" Timberly demanded.

"No, it might have been carrying a map or something. Help me roll it over."

Timberly hesitated, but to her surprise Leah and Al stepped up. Morgan counted to three—then paused to explain what that meant for Al—and on the recount, they managed to roll the body aside. It was heavy and awkward and the head moved too loosely on the neck.

Al carried a number of small objects in straps and pouches under his feathers. This wolf carried nothing like that, but...

Morgan stopped and leaned. "Uh, what does this look like to you?" Then she pointed to the underside of the wolf, specifically between the four legs.

Timberly cocked her head. "Boobs?"

Six teets, or whatever the alien equivalent was, hung down from the creature's belly. What's more, the gray-blue fur had been pulled away to expose the nipples.

"Should we be looking at this?" Timberly asked. "I feel kinda weird."

"The fur's been pulled away." Now Morgan really felt like she was in danger of throwing up. She rose to her feet. "Why didn't she run? Why did she bother to make a scent trap? She was so aggressive and there wasn't a reason for it." She ran her good hand back through her hair and repeated, "Why didn't she run?"

She could tell Al didn't understand, but from their wide eyes, Timberly and Leah did.

Turning away from the body, Morgan stepped into the darkness from where the wolf had emerged.

The scent of pine and broken cedar was overwhelming, as if someone had spray lysol all over the place. The she-wolf had definitely tried to obscure scent here. There were broken aromatic twigs, stripped to the green insides.

The bushes were thick, obscuring most of the light. Still, she was able to make out a hollow at the base of a hazelnut tree. A nest lined with gray blue fur. A little bundle lay curled up asleep in the middle of it.

It was a puppy.