The black wolf paused, panting heavily. His matted sides heaved in and out with each ragged breath as he peered warily over the frozen tundra, his tired muscles tensed to the verge of snapping.

They were still there--and they were gaining on him. There was less than half a mile of icy whiteness between himself and their horrible, noisy instruments of death, and they were gaining space with every fearful second.

The wolf took off again in a white flurry of snow, a charcoal streak across a never-ending, blue-tinted paper, his exhausted feet slipping desperately as he struggled to outrun the unspeakable terror.

He knew what those loud, cruel instruments meant; those wicked metal demons that inflicted death from a great distance. He must escape them . . . His heart pounded out a desperate, uneven rhythm as he ran. He had helplessly watched his majestic sister fall prey to those demons' fatal aim with his own liquid amber eyes. How sad the incident had been . . . a bang that had stabbed his sensitive ears and she was writhing on the ground, her thick fur stained crimson . . . her eyes, filled with excruciating pain, no longer recognizing her own brother as he nuzzled her futilely . . . Her pride was gone; she was gone. Gone forever.

Now they were after him. Merciless murderers with no reason to kill except for a burning, unexplained lust, hunting him to his end with no sense of pity, no sense of remorse, only hatred . . . deep, unfounded hatred. He had been fleeing from their ruthless pursuit for several hours, from their evil, cold-blooded hearts, with not a single place to hide. He had burst through miles of snow and slipped across miles of ice, yet there was not so much as a shadow in sight on this wasteland of still whiteness. Once his familiar home that he had freely roamed with his long-gone pack . . . now, his silent enemy.

Clouds of steam filled the cold wintry air, condensing on his whiskers like silvery glass beads as his sharp, hot breaths forced their way out of his straining lungs. He was nearly at the end of his strength, his weak lopes staggering across the snow as he tried to defy the fatigue battling his muscles--in a harsh world like this, fatigue would surely mean his end. He knew he couldn't go on much longer. The subzero temperature no longer tormented his cracked, swollen nose and lips with cold--they burned with sharp, stinging bursts of fire, and flecks of red tainted the frozen air and ground in front of him. His raw throat constricted, and without any other warning he stumbled and fell, fear racing in his mind.

Urgency fired a short burst of adrenalin into his worn-out muscles, and in a few seconds he had regained his footing--but a few seconds can make the vast difference between escape and death. They had caught up.

Even as the wolf struggled to escape them, his joints creaking in protest, the lethal instruments carried in their cruel hands were awakened. Volley after volley of deafening shots tore the smooth ground, splattering the wolf's shaking legs with blotches of white. He spun about to face them, a misty haze obscuring his vision, blood from his mouth pooling in the snow . . . he was surrounded. The circle of death tightened, and the wolf fell, shrieking, yelping. He was his sister, his cruelly hunted pack, face to face with merciless death itself . . . the image of their painful last moments came alive as the wolf's thick, black fur was pierced again and again with shards of agony.

He kicked into the frigid air, flailing in a cold sea of crimson, a desperate attempt to survive. Snarls wracked his torn throat, and his jaws snapped at empty space in painful spasms . . . he could feel the life draining out of him. His eyes, once burning with the fierce fire of life and intelligence, clouded and stared blankly up at his leering tormentors, a glaze slowly obscuring their clear, amber hue. His heart pounded hot, white pain through every vein.

The black wolf dropped his majestic head in a gesture of surrender.

He would once again run with his sister and pack.