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"If by a le you for the first tiuess we are" Cinder sluh le anybody"

"I’ll take it," said Thorne, stretching out on the floor beside her and enjoying the cold hardness of the dock’s floor, the obnoxiously glaring lights overhead, the stink of sewage on their clothes, and the perfect sensation of freedo morsel, and the wolf knew she would be even tastier than the old wo hissed as it slid into theinto the white Scarlet brushed a tufted feather off the next egg before cracking it open with one hand, si the spatula across the bottorew opaque, fluffed up, developed a crackling files

Otherwise, the house was silent She’d checked in on her dad when she’d gotten horandma’s bed, a bottle of whiskey stolen from the kitchen left open on the dresser

She’d e with every other bottle of liquor she could find, then spent four hours tossing in her own bed Her head was full with the previous evening: the burn marks on her dad’s arm, the terror in his face, his desperation to find whatever her grand-rave;re had hidden

And Wolf, with his tattoo and his intense looks and his al the spatula balance on the edge of the pan, Scarlet pulled a plate from the cabinet and sliced a hunk of stale bread fro and a clear sky proht, tossing the cornstalks and whistling past the chi, she spooned the eggs onto the plate before sitting down at the dining table She shoveled the food into her er than her nerves With her free hand, she reached for the portscreen on the table and established a netlink "Search," she h a half-full mouth "Tattoo L-S-O-P"

UNABLE TO IDENTIFY COMMAND

Gru, she typed in the ters while a streans Virtual tattoo models The science behind tattoo rey, virtually painless!

She tried: TATTOO LSOP962

No matches found

She picked up the bread and ripped out a hunk with her teeth

FOREARM TATTOO NUMBERS

A collection of ies filled the screen, ararish drawings or displaying small, tiny symbols on their wrists Thirteens and Roraphical coordinates The first year of peace, "1 TE," was popular

Jaw beginning to ache, Scarlet dropped the rest of the bread down on the plate and rubbed her palhter tattoos? Kidnapper tattoos? Mafia tattoos?

Who were these people?

She stood up and started a pot of coffee

"Wolf," she whispered to herself as the water began to percolate She let the word linger, feeling it on her lips To some, a wild beast, a predator, a nuisance To others, a shy animal as too often ered in the pit of her stoet thehis opponent a out into the fields like a man possessed At the time, she’d believed that the howl she’d heardthe farms--they certainly weren’t uncommon, not after the species protection act that had been enforced centuries ago--but her certainty was failing

They call hts

She put her plate and the e cool water over theh theSoon the farenetically enhanced honeybees

She poured the coffee before it was finished, topping herwith a splash of fresh ray wolf filled the screen, fangs bared, ears flattened Snowflakes clung to its thick coat

Scarlet dragged her finger across the screen, sending the picture away The i with their al white-and-gray-pelted wolves creeping through autumn woods She chose a link from one of the species preservation societies and scanned the text, pausing when she ca

WOLVES HOWL IN ORDER TO GAIN THE ATTENTION OF THEIR PACK OR SEND TERRITORIAL WARNINGS LONE WOLVES WHO HAVE BECOME SEPARATED FROM THEIR PACK WILL HOWL IN ORDER TO FIND THEIR COMPANIONS OFTEN, THE ALPHA MALE IS THE MOST AGGRESSIVE HOWLER OF THE PACK HIS AGGRESSIVENESS CAN BE DETECTED IN HIS LOW-PITCHED, ROUGH HOWLS WHEN HE APPROACHES A STRANGER

A chill shook Scarlet so hard her coffee splashed up over the rirab a towel andspooked by a stupid article Did she honestly think the crazy street fighter had been trying to communicate with his pack?

She threw the towel into the sink and grabbed the portscreen, ski a link about pack hierarchy

WOLVES TRAVEL IN PACKS, GROUPS THAT RANGE FROM SIX TO FIFTEEN MEMBERS AND HAVE AN ESTABLISHED HIERARCHY AT THE TOP OF THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE ARE THE ALPHA MALE AND ALPHA FEMALE, A MATED PAIR THOUGH THEY ARE FREQUENTLY THE ONLY WOLVES IN THE PACK WHO WILL BREED AND PRODUCE A LITTER, ALL OTHER PACK MEMBERS ASSIST IN FEEDING AND RAISING THE PUPS