The wolf lay beside him, breathing heavily but calmly, warming him with her body. He didn’t even notice when he fell asleep from exhaustion. The animal’s warmth spread through his body, the fear faded away, and he drifted off.
When he woke up in the morning, sunlight was already breaking through the branches. The wolf was gone. At first, he thought that everything that had happened during the night had been a dream or a hallucination.
Only the paw prints in the damp earth and a few dark tufts of fur reminded him that it had all been real.
