preface

All our attempts at subterfuge had been in vain.

With ice in my heart, I crouched beside him as we prepared to defend ourselves. His intense concentration betrayed no hint of doubt, though we were outnumbered. I knew that we could expect no help – at this moment, our family was fighting for their lives just as surely as we were for ours.

Would we ever learn the outcome of that other fight? Find out who the winners and the losers were? Would we live long enough for that?

The odds of that didn't look so great.

Black eyes, wild with their fierce craving for my death – for our deaths – watched for the moment when one of us faltered. The moment when we both would surely die.

Somewhere, far, far away in the cold forest, a wolf howled.