Prologue

"ELIAH!" she winces at the sudden outburst of her colleague.

She turns over in her bed and looks at the time, squinting.

"It's 12:03 in the morning. What do you want?" Her voice is barely audible through the grogginess.

"We have a lone wolf in the mountains. Male," Demetri informs her with a rather chirpy voice for speaking so early in the morning. The girl lets out a snore and accidentally chokes on air.

"Hurry! He is aggressive and we can't get near him! He's HUGE! We need your help!" He rants and she wants to end the call, not processing what the situation is.

Eliah feels her energy drain as she drifts back into sleep.

"Eliah, wake up! If you don't want me to be eaten by a wolf, start moving your ass out of bed and towards the mountain!" She pulls the phone away from her ear but doesn't open her eyes as the light will blind her.

"Well, now that you mention it, it's debatable. Maybe I should consider it," she chuckles and continues to choke on air due to her midnight voice scratching her throat.

"ELIAH-" she cuts him off by ending the call before he can start lecturing her and open her eyes. The girl switches the light on and ducks under her covers as if hiding from a monster.

'Why now?'

Eliah takes a deep breath and emerges from her cocoon. She hisses at the light and her cat, Python, follows suit. His fluffy, creamy tail is swinging while hanging over the side of the bed. A smile finds its way to Eliah's lazy expression and she rips the covers back, still hissing like her cat.

The ragdoll cat with blue eyes jumps onto Eliah's stomach and starts kneading all over her body. While the wind gets knocked out of her, she tries to get used to the light and sighs.

"Python, go to bed," she whispers, her lack of will to live getting the better of her. Python glares at her as if threatening to prove his point that this is his bed. She shakes her head and Python starts jumping again.

"Python," she threatens him back, but he just starts sleeping on her hair, his butt way too close to her face for comfort.

With that, she rolls out of bed and falls on the wooden floor, Python's weight ripping out a few of her hair strands.

Eliah almost goes back to sleep, but her phone starts blaring the ringtone. A whimper leaves her mouth as she blindly searches for her phone that she gently threw away earlier.

Eliah slides the answer button for the call and flinches when Demetri starts yelling again.

"GET A MOVE ON FOR GOODNESS SAKE!" he screams with so much passion, knowing the girl didn't dare to start her day at this time.

"Shut up," her hoarse voice doesn't sound as threatening as she would've liked. If he is near a wolf, like he says, he shouldn't scream like that.

Eliah rolls again, this time with more determination to stand up. She wobbles her way out of the room and continues down towards the kitchen in darkness.

"Just get moving! We have a predator on our hands who's trying to eat me!" She snorts at him and switches on the kitchen light. Taking a few seconds to adjust again to the brightness.

"Does it look like I care? If you want me to help you at this time of the night, you'll have to wait. Don't scare or even engage the wolf, that's just common sense," she finishes off and opens her fridge to take out some drinking yoghurt.

"I'm a vet. Of course, I know this! The problem is that he is hurt and we can't lose him," he wants to keep talking, but he suddenly screeches out of nowhere and Eliah gets annoyed. The girl's surprised the wolf hasn't jumped on him yet.

"I'll be there in an hour max," she ends the call and walks to the bathroom. She gets herself ready in the dark, returns to her room, and dresses in hiking clothes.

Grabbing her small grey backpack for these kinds of situations, Eiliah walks over to the front door while switching off all the lights.

"Be good, Python!" she greets her cat and walks out of her cabin, still in her sleep.

The mountain is on the other side of the city, so Eliah takes a fifteen-minute hike toward the train station. After paying for her forty-minute ride, she whips out her earphones and puts on a playlist that will keep her awake.

Three years ago, Eliah finished university with an animal physiotherapy course. Today, her job is animal physio and behaviour. She helps different kinds of pets and farm animals recover after surgery and train pets whose owners think they have behavioural problems. Abuse is usually the case, so they don't expect when Eliah to have a license to be able to report their ownership to different organisations or the government. Those idiots don't do their research, they just want their pets to behave to the owner's accords, so they still try and contact her after she's had many cases before. Now and then there is a frightened little one with a traumatic past, which Eliah is more than happy to help out.

Her life is playing out away from people and on the border of the city and the woods. There is a rather large mountain on the side of the city, the total opposite side Eiliah is living on.

Hunters are everywhere, so it doesn't matter on what side she's living, because they hunt wild animals all around the city. Then why not live in the middle? She likes to be isolated from the chaos of other people's problems. And to top it off, the amount of exercise Eliah gets walking to the shops once a week, is enough to keep her fit for hiking through nature to locate the injured.

Eliah realises her stop is here and she jumps out through the doors, walking in the direction of the reception. She stumbles through the door trying to fish out the ID in her small bundle of necessities she didn't bother to put away.

The young lady jerks awake at the sound of the bell that rang when Eliah walks inside. She looks new since Eliah has never seen her here before, or maybe she is on the night shift because the girl never went through the mountain at this time.

"Having a picnic this early?" the lady jokes after glancing at her watch.

"Um, no, not really. I'm a trained professional working with animals. My colleagues are already here and I'm here to join them," Eliah states, handing her the ID.

She carefully inspects it and Eliah gives her a business card for good measure.

"Al-" she shakes her head and continues, "Ileah." She huffs and Eliah notices she's trying to pronounce her name. "Ayle-"

"Ahl-ay-ah," Eiliah cuts her off while taking the cards the lady is handing back.

"Good luck. I heard it's a wolf," panic flashes through her eyes and Eliah smiles with gratefulness, needing all the luck she can get, and take her cards back.

Eliah ties her straight auburn hair in a messy bun, throws all the loose items in her backpack, and checks the time. She takes out a head flashlight and holds onto her phone.

Preparing for the exercise, she calls Demetri.

"I'm on my way. I just need to know where you are," the girl gets straight to the point, not happy having to walk through the dark in the woods.

"Take the yellow hiking trail, then turn left onto the blue trail. When the path splits, just keep walking forward, and when you reach the rocky waterfall just signal an SOS. We are close so I'll send one back," she notices the exhaustion in his voice and begins to worry.

"Is he still moving around?" Eliah asks while taking the yellow trail, moving her head around to guide the light.

"No, he lied down, but he's still as aggressive as ever, he's only hurting himself. Luckily he hasn't howled yet, we can't handle a whole pack, especially if they're all probably this big," he sighs and she hears shuffling.

"He's that big?" the girl asks, huffing as she walks to a higher level.

"I've never seen one so big, well, I've never seen a wolf, but you get the idea," more shuffling in the background tells her the team is getting ready for her arrival.

"Okay, I'll see you in a moment," Eliah finishes the call and puts her phone away so she can walk more comfortably.

The silence that follows surprises her behind the crunching of her steps. The eerie atmosphere makes Eliah pick up the pace and she tells herself not to think about the rest of the pack that might still be out there.

After a few long minutes of walking, the girl notices the sound of the waterfall, so she removes her headlight. She flashes an SOS when she reaches the running water and waits, placing the flashlight back on her head.

A few seconds later, Eliah notices a flickering light coming from behind one of the large trees and she makes her way to the team.

Eliah lightens her steps upon seeing the large shadow lying down in a bushy corner. What she doesn't see is the wolf's eyes turning another colour for a split second.

"You weren't kidding. He's massive," she whispers so as to not frighten the whimpering shadow.

But that was all in vain as he starts growling.