DEUX
Jean-Luc came back trembling. He collapsed across the Den’s threshold and covered his muzzle with apricot paws.
“I found something,” he said.
Chocolat padded forward on stubby legs. Her curls were wild, and her eyes narrowed.
“What?”
Jean-Luc only whimpered.
Chocolat snorted. Twin wisps of breath flared from her lungs, then vanished in the cold. Her faded brown legs brushed Jean-Luc as she passed; and he followed—slowly and at a distance, with the rest of the pack.
When they found her, she was licking. It was snowing and silent, and she was licking. The flakes had crusted his stiffened paws, and she was licking. She was barely two years old, and his belly bled into the snow like shafts of light, and she was licking.
Chocolat nuzzled Vivienne away from M Jean-Baptiste. She set her on the back of a spotted standard and watched them meld into a drift of distant snow. Jean-Luc’s paws were already wet from frosted earth. She turned away from the corpse and joined her mate to dig.