At this point, Flair was intimately familiar with the lands surrounding Turtleback. She knew where every creek and river left the woods to join the lake, and every curve and bend they took through the giant redwoods. She’d made a daily habit of walking the trails throughout Kingsfall, tracking the deer and moose who’d also made the forest home, and leaving her own mark as a message to other wolves that these lands were claimed already.

She liked the redwoods, tall and imposing as they might seem, there was a strange safety in walking among the giants, a feeling that nothing could ever be as big or imposing as the sequoia trees, no true threat could ever invade this place. And after the draught, the security of a major water source like the lake, only made the area feel even more perfect.

There was just this one part of the lakeshore that she always shied away from, that filled her with apprehension: The stone labyrinth. The weathered and twisted rock, often enveloped in dense, creeping fog, felt unnatural - and it wasn’t just her who thought so, in all her time at the lake, she’d never seen another living thing going in there.

That was, until tonight. As the fiery woman was making her last rounds, readying to skirt the stones as she always did, something caught her eye. A flash of red, and a hulking, shadowy figure, moving among the pillars. A jolt went through her, and she froze in place, eyes narrowing to see better in the dark: Was that a wolf? If so, it was the biggest wolf she’d ever seen, lurking way too close for comfort; Son of a…!