Timmorn turned back to her whom everyone else called Valloa.

Later, Timmorn ran through the darkest part of the night, through the deep woods. His eyes, yellow as twin moons, saw the world swirl mistily by him in the starlight as he ran, his breath and blood singing, the wolf high within him. Somewhere, behind the trees in the deepest shadows, he knew the wolf-pack was with him, though they still ran their own path, black and fluid in the night. Not true elf, not true wolf, Timmorn was both now, instead of neither. That knowledge lived, secure, in his blood.

Back in the camp, the one who had been Valloa slept, her wounds attended by the healer. Among the others, there was some little confusion, for they did not understand why she went by another name now. No matter. The new name, the Murrel name whispered in his mind with a voice no one else could hear or share, and it called to him. The two had not joined this night as the voice had gently urged, for she was

still weak, but Timmorn knew that matings-and cubs-would come. There was a something, a bond, a feeling he had not experienced before. It was a feeling both fresh and new, and incredibly ancient. It warmed within him.

(And as he ran and turned the new thing over and over in his mind, tasting it, Timmorn also thought of the other one, Seilein. He grinned, wolflike, lips tight over sharp teeth; there would be joinings there too, if he had sensed her own mind and scent correctly…)

It is life, he realized, slowing to a gentle lope. He went in his mind to the place that had been so troubled, to the empty hole that had been gouged there by the death of the wolf days before. The new thoughts filled the hole and soothed it, and they were the shape and color and smell and feel of life.

Timmorn had seen death before, and he knew he would see it again. The world was full of death. But now he could fight it and not scamper aside from its fangs and claws like a frightened wolf who only knew self, and not others.