Chapter 4

They ran all night, just as the alpha had said. It was an anxious, exhausting, exhilarating experience for Netya. For the first hour she clung to the wolf so tight that her body was soon aching, terrified that the jolting motion of the creature beneath her would send her toppling head first into a patch of rocks or the trunk of a tree if she loosened her grip for even an instant.

The cold wind stung her eyes until they were streaming. The wooded lands around her village thinned out, and soon she was already further than she had ever been from home. The last of the trees disappeared as the wolf pack streaked out across the open plains before them, nothing but endless grassland to be seen in every direction.

Was this the edge of the world, where trees and water and animals stopped existing, and every direction held more of the same nothingness?

The Moon People ran east, never altering their course. Eventually the plains became more uneven, rocky outcroppings breaking