Ada Clara barely slept. The ground was damp and bitterly cold, and the night passed in a broken cycle of waking — shivering herself conscious, gagging on the stench, then drifting back into nightmares where wolves poured into the den and swallowed her whole.
She endured every hour of it.
When the first pale light finally bled through the mouth of the hollow, she exhaled for what felt like the first time all night. As darkness retreated, the distant howling faded — the pack was returning to their dens. Ada Clara let her forehead drop against the cold earth and breathed.
Then a thought struck her.
She pulled her camera from her bag, adjusted the exposure for the low light, and documented everything — the den, the carcasses, the pups. Grim as it was, it was real, and it was hers.
She had spent a week on the steppe. She had everything she'd come for. It was time to go back.
But there was still the matter of the small, living creature tucked inside her jacket.
Ada Clara had always been led by feeling before logic — most art students were, especially the women. She knew, in the rational corner of her mind, that wolves were a protected and endangered species. If she left the pup behind, it would be dead within days — cold or starvation, whichever came first. But if she took it with her, what then?
She was still wrestling with the question when the smell made the decision for her. She tucked the pup into her jacket pocket, draped a glove over it for warmth, gathered her pack, and crawled out of the den.
The open air hit her like a gift.
She jammed the tripod into the ground and began the long, limping walk back to the settlement. One agonizing step at a time. Her ankle had worsened overnight, the swelling thick and hot, each step sending a spike of pain straight up her leg. It took the better part of a day to reach the herders' homes, stopping twice along the way to feed the pup from her fingertip.
Uncle Lawson's family received her with a calm that surprised her — even with a wolf pup cradled in her arms, no one so much as raised an eyebrow. Ada Clara told them everything from the beginning. Uncle Zhate listened, then nodded slowly.
"It's whelping season," he said. "The snow hasn't fully melted yet, which means prey is scarce. When wolves go hungry, they come in packs to raid our meat stores. So herders set out poison — happens every year around this time. Plenty of wolves don't make it through. Once the mother dies, her pups don't last long after."
It was a hard truth, and an old one. Wolves were protected by law, but the law didn't compensate a herder for the livestock a pack tore apart in the night. Unable to hunt wolves openly, the herders did what they had to do quietly, and the steppe kept its secrets.
Ada Clara's eyes moved to the hunting dog lying in the corner of the yard, two months past whelping, her own litter still nursing. An idea took shape. She limped over, crouched down, and carefully pressed the wolf pup to the dog's belly, trying to guide its mouth toward a teat.
The dog's nostrils flared. One breath was all it took.
She lunged — jaws wide — and Ada Clara yanked her hand back just in time, the teeth snapping shut on empty air.
"Woof! Woof! Woof!"
Five or six of the young hunting dogs came bounding over at once, drawn by the commotion, surrounding them in a chaos of barking. Ada Clara clutched the pup to her chest and retreated into the house, heart hammering.
She wasn't ready to give up.
She came back with a piece of meat and spent long minutes coaxing the nursing dog — stroking her belly in slow, gentle circles, letting her lick her fingers, murmuring softly until the dog relaxed and lay still. When the moment felt right, Ada Clara eased the wolf pup forward again.
The dog was on her feet in an instant, fangs bared, no hesitation whatsoever.
After more than a dozen attempts, Ada Clara finally sat back on her heels and accepted it.
"Clara," Uncle Lawson said from the doorway, his voice not unkind, "dogs and wolves are natural enemies. You won't get her to nurse it in a day, or even a week. That pup doesn't have much time left. You should start thinking about what you're going to do with it."
"Is there any way to save it?" Ada Clara asked.
Uncle Lawson considered her for a moment. "Wolves are stubborn creatures. They don't take kindly to charity — they never have. But that one seems to have taken to you, which is something." He paused. "Aren't you heading back to school? Take it with you. Whether it lives or dies after that is between it and fate."
Ada Clara looked down at the pup lying in her open palm — barely moving, barely breathing, but still fighting. She thought about the den. About how its mother's rotting carcass had hidden her scent and kept her alive through the night. She owed that hollow, and perhaps she owed this creature too.
She couldn't save it. But she could try.
She nestled the pup inside a small insulated pouch, tucked it safely into her bag alongside the local specialties she'd collected from the steppe, and boarded the train back to school.