He never wondered anymore why the sight of her, healthy and full-bodied, and the salty sweet sweat-and-berries smell of her always brought strange sounds and thoughts to mind. No other animal in the woods brought its own language up inside his head. The wolf looked at her and thought woman and ripe and mate in sounds like those that came from her own pink mouth when she was… was talking to herself. He never wondered anymore, because his instincts told him when he’d gotten here after roaming for so long that this woman was what had drawn him on, always toward the setting sun. She wasn’t prey, and yet she was, not in the way of a rabbit or a deer but in a way that a soft, fertile, unmated she-wolf was prey to a male about to make his claim. When the woman had started and spun toward movement behind her, he had jumped from his rocky post to meet the danger. Now, she looked forlorn back toward the place he had been. Her inability to smell him and sense his nearness, to realize how close he was, just proved how much this little she-beast needed his protection.
