Packless. The wolf hell.

Her stomach burned, the flames dancing up to her jaws and expelling themselves as a thick dragon mist.

Loner: wandering pacifists. Rogue: wandering barbarians.

Snow had yet to decide which she was, the harsh bear or the spooked reindeer.

This had to be done. She threatened her father involuntarily. She hadn't even known she did. For how long had her father known that she would mark his doom as a wolf marks their quarry?

How long had her father comforted her, licks smoothing down spirited fluffed fur whilst this weighed down on his mind, a low-lying cloud, heavy with guilt but light; knowing he still had time.

Paw pads stung as if she tread on moon splinters, the path she must take vivid in her mind but misty on foot.

Why had the lunar goddess not sewn this prophecy into her head with her silver needles that do shake the ground when the clouds are grey, grey with the oncoming storm?

Perhaps

Snow shook her shaggy fur, clumped together with melted sleet. It couldn't be.

Perhaps the lunar goddess did not exist at all.

A treasonous thought, one her pack would ridicule.

But Snow was not in any pack.

She was a loner.