It mattered little to the sleek and powerful german shepherd dog that the small town's streets had been brightened with additional lamp, lantern, even fired torch-light. He merely clung more stealthily to the inevitable shadows of the warm summer night, avoiding with ease the clumsy patroling male-humans who sought to destroy him. A balanced sense of avenged pride burned warmly in his deep muscular chest; he had punished them for the brutal, torture-death of his mate, satisfying the ancient law cryptically imbedded in his uncanny animal-brain… lex talionis… the law of retaliation. Yet, in so doing, he had rekindled the banked embers of another smoldering force from ages passed, a seething aberrant urge that had brought him down from the hills again this night.

Caesar stole his way in a surreptitious silence equal to the very shadows enshrouding him, knowing exactly his destination, the craving dictate in his feral loins magnetically guiding him. Cautiously, he moved his great head in searching sweeps, aware through instinct that the gold medallion hanging from his throat on its glittering chain could attract attention in the light of the moon. Ahead, he saw the shelter where she would be lying on the human sleeping place, the golden female-human he had chosen to replace the mate they had cruelly killed.

A feverish heat spread through his huge, invincible body at the glow coming from the opened window. She was waiting for him…!

The surge of wild mating instinct motivating the massive dog caused his long tongue to lick out ravenously at his lips, while his mighty animal-loins convulsively reacted in pulsating throbs. Deliberately, but with vigilance, the illusive, canine beast crept toward the open window, a sudden piercing howl back in the hills advising him that his pack was racing down toward the valley in its quest for food…