Prologue

Why is this happening? What had she ever done to deserve this? How could this happen? Was she being punished? If so, for what? She didn't flaunt her looks. She always stayed modest, doing her best not to stand out. She never wore anything provocative at all. Just like mother said she should.

So why was this happening? Is it because she rode the train late at night? She wouldn't have if she didn't stay late to finish the project She only wanted to help, to be a good hard worker the way she was raised to.

And for that this was happening? Why? Why?

Why!?

"Your hair smells real nice," the man rasped into her ear. His hard hands, calloused from a lifetime of getting into fights, snaking up the inside of her blouse. His jagged fingernails scraping tiny furrows in her skin as he roughly grabbed and prodded. His breath stank of beer. She could feel his crotch encroaching on her as he pressed her into the corner.

She couldn't fight him off. He was too strong. And there was more than one.

"Look at the size of those tits," the second of his also drunk partners slurred, using the English word. "She looks a little like Yamaguchi."

"It's like we've got our very own idol all to ourselves," guffawed the third, drawing more drunken laughing from them two. "How lucky!"

Why wouldn't anyone help her? Were they too afraid? Afraid that they'd turn on them? No one wants to get involved? What would happen to her then?

Well, maybe…maybe they'll just leave after a while. Maybe-

The leader stopped licking the side of her face, and turned to his cackling lackeys. "Shut up!" snapped the leader, who was grinding up against her back. "I can't hear her little whimpering if you keep yammering on like a bunch of monkeys. You'll get your turn when I'm done."

The sound of jingling turned her blood to ice as the realization dawned on her. He was undoing his belt. Dear God.

They were about to rape her.

They were really about to rape her.

She was still a virgin. She didn't want to lose her innocence like this. Not like this. "Please…don't…"

"Huh?" He brought his face in close to hers, pressing her head against the window pane his hand. "What's that?"

"Please..." Her voice broke into sobs. She could hardly stand. She'd never felt misery like this. This was hell, she realized. This was hell. Nothing on Earth could ever feel worse than this.

No pain. No loss. No sadness.

These men were about to…to…

No. No. No. NO.

"Someone!" she suddenly cried, tears forming rivers from both eyes. "Anyone! Please help me! Anyone! Hel-"

The man holding her punched her in the stomach. And it felt like she'd been broken in half. She could only remember being unable to breath and at some point she'd been laid on her back. The man who hit her was spitting something at someone about holding her down, but she couldn't concentrate on anything but trying to breath. The next thing she knew her dress had somehow disappeared and she felt cold metal against the bare skin of her lower body.

She had no strength to shout and even less to resist.

And she truly, truly would rather be dead.

"For fuck's sake. How's a man supposed to get a nap with all this noise and you people stinking up the place," an irritated baritone voice said in English. But the woman didn't understand anything but the swear word.

"What the-?" the man who was only inches from entering her said.

The woman's eyes were clouded with tears, so she couldn't get a clear look. But it looked like she was looking at an impossibly tall shadow with piercing brown eyes.

"Who is this dickhole?" the leader swore as he fumbled up to his feet. His head barely came to the shadowy figure's chest. A glint of metal appeared in his hand with a sharp click. It was probably a knife."What do you want, big boy? What you want a turn-"

The man broke off in a loud shriek of agony. He staggered away from the shadowy figure clutching his arm. The butterfly knife clattered from his grip to the floor.

The lady must've been worse off than she thought, because it looked like the man's forearm was bent at a 90 angle to the ground half way between his wrist and elbow. She could almost see bone jaggedly poking through the skin. But that was ridiculous.

Was she hallucinating from pain? Was that even possible? Or had she gone insane and made up a false scenario to cope?

Either way the woman was nothing more than a spectator now. She wanted to scream, but couldn't. She wanted to curl up into the smallest ball she could, but her limbs refused to listen. She could only sit and listen.

Regardless the answer, she just wished the hurt would go away.

There was flurry of movement and cursing around the down woman, and cries of shock came from the patrons who were busy pretending a vile act wasn't happening mere feet from them. It was all so fast. She didn't even recall the dark figure moving, though he never quiet left her field of vision. She saw the leader's cohorts attack, but something repelled them. Rejected their retaliation as if they were insolent flies. She heard something explosion of breath from a man's chest as something hard slammed into it. And the other man cried out in terror as his body was thrown straight up into the ceiling. In what could've been a handful of seconds or minutes, the interior of the train car was quiet except for anguished cries of pain.

The woman's eyes sagged closed in weariness. She didn't know what to feel. Didn't know what to think. Had she been saved? Some part of her said that she had and that she should be grateful. That she was going to be alright, but the thought brought her no feelings of joy or gratefulness. She simply felt numb. And cold. Especially around the lower body.

It was then that she realized someone was carrying her, because suddenly her body wasn't cold anymore. She could feel someone's large hands supporting her. A large, muscled chest pressing against her. She could feel body heat sink into her own. So impossibly large it felt. And the smell…oh…the smell. It was so…soothing. She'd never smelled this aroma before. She breathed in deeply. It was a rich scent. It was like the scent of a delicious meal lost in her memory or of a flower she'd only sniffed once and then forgot. And all at once, she could feel the pain fade away, and then vanish. The pain in her stomach. Gone. The scratches on her breasts and neck. As if they were never there. Her skin feel like it was wrapped in silk. Or as if it became silk. Sound and light all around her seemed to fade away at the same time until there was nothing except peace and warmth.

She didn't feel broken and beaten anymore.

She didn't feel like some creep's helpless plaything anymore.

She didn't want to be dead anymore.

She could go on living.

"Thank you." The words left her lips, barely more than a whisper. She didn't know why or to whom they were even intended. Her disheveled brain couldn't put together who or what was carrying her, or exactly why, but she didn't want to be put down ever again.

"What a pain in the ass," murmured the deep voice. The woman knew that response didn't go with any English terms for accepting gratitude, but since she didn't know what it meant, didn't find herself offended. The woman could feel herself being lowered. "Keep the coat. It wasn't my color anyway. See ya."

And then the warming presence was gone.

"Goodness! Miss? Are you okay?" a concerned female voice asked as other sounds and light slowly filtered back in.

The woman slowly opened her eyes to see she was standing directly outside of an emergency room at St. Luke's International Hospital, the concerned nurse holding an umbrella against the light, early winter snowfall.

How had she got here? She was blocks from the nearest train station. More than that, how had she gotten off the train? And how was she standing when she…

Her legs gave out and she would've fallen if the nurse didn't catch her first.

"Ah! Someone help! Someone bring a gurney! This woman needs help!" the nurse called.

The woman let the nurse carry her inside the emergency room. Slow waves of relief washing over her as she realized this wasn't a dream, and that she really was going to be okay. And for the second time…she let tears streak down her face.

Something caught her eye. In the snow. It was solely by chance that she saw it. She only saw it briefly before the mass of emergency room workers rushed to her aid and trampled it into nothing. She could no more make sense of it than she could how she'd gotten to the hospital. She could've easily just been seeing things. Maybe she'd truly gone insane after all, but she was certain exactly what it was the moment she saw it for reasons she didn't understand..

The large paw print of a dog. No. Not a dog. It was bigger than that.

A wolf's paw print.