Nick Thomas pulled up to the train station in his brand-new Jetta and swept Clara into a long, dramatic embrace the moment he spotted her.
"Baby, I missed you like crazy." He pulled back, grinning. "Did any wolves on that steppe try to devour you?"
"I was hoping they would," Clara said dryly. "Tragically, no such luck."
He laughed and loaded her bags into the trunk, though a crease appeared between his brows as he worked. "You were gone for over two weeks and you called me exactly once. Not even a text. I nearly lost my mind trying to reach you — what happened?"
"The reception out there is terrible. No internet in the settlement either." She kept her voice light, but the memory surfaced unbidden — the howling closing in, the darkness, the smell of the den. Her chest tightened slightly. "I was going a little crazy myself, honestly."
Thomas was a senior from the finance department at her university — not wealthy by any extravagant measure, but comfortably well-off. He'd graduated and landed a position at a Fortune 500 company, rented a decent apartment, bought himself a decent car, and was getting on with a decent life. He was, by all accounts, doing fine.
"So," he said, sliding into the driver's seat. "Did the great steppe give you anything worth bringing back?" He reached into the back seat and produced a bouquet of vivid red roses, offering them with a grin.
Clara gave him a look. "Could you be any more predictable?"
She took the flowers anyway.
"Art people always have opinions about romance," he said cheerfully. "I'm a simple man. I do simple things." He reached into the back seat again and retrieved a neatly wrapped box. "But I also do this. Go on, open it."
She pulled back the wrapping — and her breath caught.
"How did you know?" The lens had been on her wishlist for years, always just out of reach, always too expensive. She looked up at him, genuinely startled.
"Photographers and their lenses," he said with a shrug, looking quietly pleased with himself. "Seemed obvious."
"It's too much, I can't—"
"It's from your boyfriend. You can." He waved her off. "And just so you know — no returns, no refunds. If you don't want it, I'll have to throw it in the bin."
"Fine," Clara said, cradling the box. "I'm keeping it." His birthday was coming up soon. She'd find something good.
"Mmm… mmm…"
The sound rose from somewhere inside her bag — small, insistent, unmistakably alive.
Thomas flinched. "What was that?"
Clara set the lens box aside and reached into her bag, producing the insulated pouch. She uncapped the small thermos of milk she'd prepared, filled a tiny nursing bottle, and pressed the teat to the pup's mouth.
Thomas pulled the car to the side of the road and stared.
"Where did that come from?"
"I brought it back from the steppe," Clara said, not looking up. "It's a dog."
A wolf was simply not something she could say out loud. She could barely believe it herself.
"A dog," he repeated, skeptical. "You went all the way to Inner Mongolia and came back with a dog. When you could have bought one here."
"It saved my life." She kept her eyes on the pup. "I was out photographing with some herders and we ran into a wolf pack. Its mother fought them off — but she didn't make it. So I brought it home."
Thomas studied her face for a moment, clearly unconvinced by some detail he couldn't quite identify. But he let it go.
"Does the school even allow pets?"
"Not entirely sure." She tilted the bottle slightly. "I'll figure it out."
He watched her feed the pup in silence, at a loss for words he couldn't quite locate. He didn't understand art, and he didn't understand why a person would haul a stray animal across half the country. But she was his girlfriend, and if this made her happy, then fine. Let her keep it.
Clara barely noticed his expression. Her attention had narrowed to the small creature in her hands — the one that had survived days of starvation and cold that should have killed it, the one that had spent the entire train ride teetering at the edge. But here, in the warmth of the car, something had shifted. The pup's movements were a little stronger. Its suckling a little more determined.
She leaned down close.
"Mmm… mmm… mmm…" she murmured, badly mimicking a dog's whine, trying to catch its attention.
Thomas stared at her with an expression of profound suffering.
He put the car in drive and said nothing.