That afternoon Sofia decided to go for a short run along the same dirt road she had taken that morning to get to school. Fortunately it had stopped raining, and the clouds had turned into thick patches of gray with small clearings that let in the orange evening light. Beside her, tongue hanging between his jaws, trotted Kas, her black and tan Dobermann.

As she ran, Sofia concentrated on keeping the rhythm of her breathing in step with her footsteps. For a handful of strides she closed her eyes and let the forest's fresh, moist air into her lungs. Dozens of smells wafted into her nostrils, all of them familiar, including the smell of wet earth and that of the pine trees around her. Yes, she was aware that she was giving in to her instincts, she was sniffing. A part of her felt guilty for indulging the canine nature she had inherited from her father, but sniffing relaxed her. In fact, that was why she had gone for a run, because she needed to relax a little and think.

“A cinanthrope...” she murmured, and that word made her stomach knot with anxiety.

That encounter had brought back too many emotions that she wanted to leave buried forever. She hadn't been in contact with one of them since she'd left the hunter's guild, and she didn't want to be around one ever again. For a year she had been trying hard to build a normal life for herself, a human life, so that she could leave the supernatural world behind for good. Seeing the fear in his eyes and the blood staining his muzzle had reminded her why she had to flee from the ones who, until that moment, had been her friends.

“Shit! What did you kill?” she whimpered.

An elderly couple who had been out picking mushrooms stared at her. Feeling very foolish, Sofia ducked her head and ran on. On the way she came across a few more people who had decided to use the respite the rain was giving them to go for a walk. They were villagers, familiar faces with humble and simple lives who were unaware that a creature born of legends had appeared on their land.

El Cerro was Spain's most haunted village after Trasmoz. At least that's what its neighbors used to jest, although there was a lot of truth behind the joke. Every autumn there was a pagan festival called The Witches' Night. It made sense, considering that many neighbors, skilled in making ointments and infusions, dabbled more with magic than many people realized. There was also no shortage of tales of werewolves and even spirit apparitions, though Sofia had seen no evidence that there was a single cinanthrope in the village.

“And now you have a real werewolf in the forest,” Sofia muttered, almost wanting to laugh at the irony.

After running for a while, Sofia stopped to stretch her muscles. While she did her exercises, Kas kept himself busy sniffing something he had found near the edge of the forest. At first glance it looked like a simple puddle, although it had a rather peculiar shape. When the dog felt he had completed the appropriate analysis, he began snooping around a nearby bush with great interest. It didn't seem to have anything special but the way he stuck his muzzle through the leaves to sniff vigorously aroused the girl's curiosity.

“What did you find?”

Kas looked at her and wagged his little tail. His tongue hung between his jaws, open in something that looked like a smile. Sofia's heart skipped a beat when she saw what was hooked to the bush's branches. A tuft of white hair. On closer inspection, the puddles Kas had been paying attention to were prints, the paw prints of a huge canid that had filled with water due to the rain. An anguished whimper escaped her throat when she saw another pair of tracks next to the first, these much more recent ones; trainers.

“No... no, no, no, no,” she whimpered and looked around as she bit her lip, “Fuck! What do I do?”

She didn't want to get involved with a cinanthrope again but hunters tended to wear light trainers so they could move quietly. If this was a hunter, that cinanthrope was going to be in a lot of trouble. It should be none of her business. If she ignored him and he was hunted, she wouldn't even have to know about it. She could go on with her life and her plans to have a normal life, away from the whole world.

“Shit!” she groaned, knowing she wouldn't sleep with a clear conscience if she let them hurt him.

Time to dust off her old knowledge, even if she hated herself for it. It had been a long time since she'd done this and the very idea made her feel nauseous. Her mother, the person who trained her in the hunting arts, always took advantage of her keen senses to help her track her prey. Sofia never saw her take them down, but that didn't make her feel any better. Many of those cinanthropes were frightened pups who didn't understand what had happened to them.

“I'm not going to use these skills for evil. They're very useful skills and I can use them to do something good with them... like find that damn fool who keeps leaving paw prints all over the place.” She gritted her teeth and let out a quiet growl.

Sofia grabbed the tuft of white fur and rubbed it between her fingers. It was soaked but still had the cottony texture of undercoat. Then she brought it to her nose and tried to pick up any scent that might give her a clue. Although it was too wet and it had gotten impregnated with all the smells of the forest, she was able to perceive a musk that made the hair on the back of her neck bristle. She recognized it right away because it was the same one that lingered near the meadows. That’s why she avoided them, because every time she smelled that, her hunting instincts kicked in, even though she hadn’t changed yet. It smelled of cattle, sheep to be more exact.

“What have you done?” she whimpered, and looked towards the forest.

A cinanthrope hunting wild animals could go unnoticed. One preying on livestock could not. Sofia bit her lip and rubbed the tuft of hair between her fingers again as she considered her options. He was probably a pup, and it was possible that this had been the first time he changed. The change itself was terrifying enough, especially if he didn't know what was happening to him, but if it had happened at the same time he was giving in to the hunting instincts, that would explain why he was running as if he was being chased by the king of the hunters himself.

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“Or the queen herself,” Sofia murmured, feeling a shiver run down her spine.

A shudder followed that shiver, and Sofia knew what her body wanted; to shake free of the unease she felt. She didn't like to give in to her instincts because she felt that, if she did, her control would be more precarious, but she was alone and no one could see her. The temptation was strong enough. With a growl of frustration, she turned away and rubbed her face with her hands. No, she couldn't, she couldn't give in to her instincts whenever she wanted to or she would end up doing it in front of people. She had to keep control.

“Okay, calm down, what have we got?” She told Kas, who looked at her as if everything she was saying was very interesting. “We have a pup that has attacked livestock, but we don't know where it is. It's possible these tracks don't belong to a hunter. It's too early for a hunter to have found out, so they may be the pup's, who is trying to hide what he's done, or trying to understand perhaps. If the shepherds haven't noticed yet we may be able to lend him a hand to keep him from being discovered. Shit! What am I doing?”

Again she looked towards the forest. A year, a whole year of trying to live a normal, human life, and this pup had to come and fuck it all up.

“When I catch you, I'm going to kill you,” she exclaimed with a growl of frustration in her voice.

Then she went into the woods. There, under the shade of the tall pines, the smell emanating from the earth was stronger. An overwhelming number of scents, among which she recognized a warm musk that belonged to Kas, entered her nose. She could recognize her dog's because she was used to it and knew it well. Using her nose to follow the cinanthrope's scent was going to be impossible because she did not know his scent, so she could not discriminate it from the other scents. She had no choice but to use her eyes.

For a couple of meters or so, Sofia followed the slipper tracks, which walked alongside the cinanthrope’s paw prints trail, but after a few meters they disappeared. Not only those, but the canid's as well. Sofia bit her lip and bent down to take a closer look at the ground. Careful not to disturb the soil too much, she removed a handful of pine leaves and shrubbery.

The first thing she noticed was that the dirt underneath had been smeared. She also noticed that, in areas where the soil was harder, there was evidence that someone had set foot there. Subtle things, such as a few broken blades of grass or a stone that had shifted a little. An icy chill ran through her veins.

“Whoever is hiding the tracks knows how to move stealthily, knows what to do to avoid leaving marks on the ground and to be quiet, but this doesn't make any sense. No hunter would erase their prey's tracks. Maybe...”

A rustle in the undergrowth made the hair on the back of her neck bristle. Kas, alerted by the noise, moved behind his friend like the vile coward he was, and let out a low, uncertain growl. Sofia, still crouched on the ground, started to sniff the air trying to pick up some distinctive scent that would let her know what was hidden in the undergrowth. To her nose came the aromas of the forest around her and that of the cowardly dog hiding behind her, but nothing more. The wind was against her.

“Maybe it's just a fox. There are many foxes here.”

“I've told ye many times, Miguel, don't ye let the herd loose and go to the bar. This is yer fault.”

That woman's voice echoed in the silence of the forest like thunder. Kas and Sofia turned at the same time in the sound’s direction, and whatever was hiding in the undergrowth scurried away in silent footsteps. Trying to make out what it was in the midst of the shouting was impossible, because the woman wasn't the only one to flood the forest with her angry yelling.

“Fuck, Juani, because there are no wolves’ere. How was I s’pposed to know that there’be a fucking mutt?”

“There are no wolves’ere, there are no wolves’ere,” said the woman in a mocking tone. “Go’ome now, ye. And ye'd better keep an eye on the herd so this doesn't ‘appen again.”

As those two walked away, their complaints still echoing through the trees, Kas raised his head and sniffed the air. His sense of smell was extraordinary, better than Sofia's, not because he was a dog but because she hadn't changed yet and her senses hadn't finished developing.

The dog let out a playful bark and ran towards the dirt path.

“Kas!”

Sofia went after him. Kas disappeared into the bushes that lined the path and the girl jumped through them without even looking where she was going. It was then that she collided face first with someone, and she would have fallen to the ground had it not been for the hands that held her by the arms. Her nose was flooded with a pleasant masculine musk mixed with an intense forest scent that almost masked it.

“I'm sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going and–”

Dazed, she looked up and her gaze met a pair of eyes the color of the sky that looked at her with concern. The words died on her lips.

“Don't worry, it's okay. Are you all right?” asked Dave.

“Yes, I'm fine. Thanks for holding me and not knocking me down. Considering the way I behaved this morning, I would have deserved it,” she mumbled, looking away.

The boy was wearing a tracksuit and trainers, and it was obvious from the amount of mud splattered on his trousers that he'd been running just like her. Sofia bit her lip and wanted to whine. Cute, kind and athletic on top of that. She couldn't have had worse luck.

“It was nothing.” The boy scratched his head and twisted his lips into a small, controlled smile. Then he turned his attention to the dog, who was sniffing him and wagging his tail. “Is he yours?”

“Yes, he's mine.” A terrible fear began to well up within her, and a voice inside her screamed for him not to do what she thought he was going to do, because she couldn't bear it.

“Can I?”

‘Shit’.

“Yeah, sure.”

It was worse than she thought. The boy knelt down in front of the dog and began to pet his neck and back. A smile, much wider and more sincere, began to work its way onto his lips, and Kas seemed to like him because he wagged his tail and licked his face, which made Dave laugh. That laughter was crystal clear and joyful, and Sofia just wanted to cry.

“I'm sorry, I have to go now. Kas, let's go,” Sofia said, her voice strangled by the whimper she was trying to hold back.

Without waiting for the boy to respond, Sofia grabbed Kas by the collar and dragged him away. Dave tilted his head to one side and looked at her confused, and that made Sofia want to cry even harder. Biting her lip, she started to run down the path, the memory of his laughter and his enthusiastic gaze still lingering in her mind. She couldn't let this boy get close to her. She couldn't let him become her friend and risk getting her heart broken when he discovered that she wasn’t human. However, when she saw him petting her dog, when she saw that smile that threatened to grow wider, when she saw the sparkle in his eyes, she wanted to get to know him better.

“Shit!”