They were being hunted.

She couldn’t see anything through the driving rain and thick jungle, but she could feel it. That hair-raising prickle of dread hitched up her spine with clammy certainty.

Fenrir sensed it too. The pup whined and butted at the back of her leg. His tail curled tight under his body and he shook, though whether from fear or cold or both, she couldn’t say.

Sara herself on the other hand, could definitely say she was quite cold. The rain had soaked through her thin hide clothing hours ago. She was shivering. It took effort to keep her teeth from chattering. And if that wasn’t enough, as it grew darker the temperature dropped. Her breath wheezed out in frost-tinged puffs, doing nothing to help her numbed fingers as she tried in vain to warm them.

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If they didn’t find shelter soon, they would die.

“Just keep swimming,” she murmured, mostly to herself.

They pushed forward for a little longer, until Sara slipped and nearly fell headlong into a river. It was too dark to see it clearly and the storm masked the sound of the rushing water. She fell backward and just sat on the muddy bank.

Fenrir’s hackles raised. He turned to her right and started barking just as a weird tingling sensation lanced up her side.

She looked down. An arrow jutted out of her thigh.

“Well, fuck,” she said.

A figure emerged from the shadows. The tingling spread and she felt woozy, almost drunk. She tried to stand up, to run, to do something, but her body refused to move. She slumped over onto her side.

Fenrir hurled himself at their attacker.

She tried to command him to run but couldn’t form the words. She blacked out to the sound of him yipping and the constant, merciless pounding of the rain she no longer felt on her skin.