When I woke again it was to sunlight streaming between the curtains I had forgotten to close the night before. Stephen was curled into my side, still fast asleep. Careful not to wake him, I rolled over and leaned my head on my bent arm, content just to watch him sleep.

I've heard that people look younger when they sleep. Stephen didn't look younger, thankfully, since the age difference bothered me enough as it was, but he did look more at peace than I had seen him in a long time.

It was only a few minutes before he stirred, eyes blinking sleepily before finding mine. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," he replied. There was that wary look in his eyes again. I wondered if he had changed his mind since last night, or if he thought that I had. Well, the first I couldn't do anything about, but as for the second - lack of communication had nearly destroyed us, so I was determined that Stephen would never be unsure of my feelings for him again. So I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the mouth.

All the tension drained out of him as he sighed and deepened the kiss. Thank God I hadn't misread things.

What might have been a wonderful leisurely morning snog was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone.

Stephen pulled back. "That'll be Lester," he predicted.

"He can wait," I answered, as I pulled him close again. Unfortunately that was about when the machine clicked on and Lester's voice rather spoiled the mood.

"Cutter, I certainly hope the reason you aren't answering is that you're already on your way in. I'd really like a report on what the hell happened yesterday and exactly why there is a giant wolf in my infirmary. And if you see Stephen, tell him I expect his report too."

I sighed and rolled off the bed. "Your stuff's still in the wardrobe," I told Stephen. "You can have the shower first."

The thought of sharing had occurred to me, but I had a feeling if we did that Lester would have to send a search party.

Stephen must have had a similar thought, because he looked wistfully at the bedside clock before heading to the wardrobe to gather up some of the clothes he'd always kept at my place since we'd started going on field expeditions together. That was something I'd been relieved to find hadn't changed in this time-line.

I noticed he was still limping. "How's the ankle?"

Stephen looked down at his feet. "Not bad. A bit sore. Strained, maybe, but not sprained. How's your head?"

"Hard, apparently," I answered. "The doctor said I didn't have a concussion, and it barely hurts this morning."

"Sorry," he said, sounding embarrassed. "I should have asked you last night."

"Don't worry. We both had other things on our minds." I grinned. "Now, go and get your shower before Lester calls in the troops."

Stephen headed into the bathroom, and I turned to get myself ready for mine, only to be startled as Stephen emerged seconds later. Clad only in the boxers he had worn to bed, he marched across the bedroom, grabbed my head in his hands, and stuck his tongue down my throat. After what seemed like mere moments of the most enthusiastic kiss I'd ever been on the receiving end of, Stephen pulled back and smirked.

"That's better," he said, and disappeared once more into the bathroom. I heard the shower turn on as I sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and smiled so wide that my cheeks hurt.

Two hours after arriving at the ARC, Lester finally let us go to check on the dire wolf. Despite being assured the wolf was resting comfortably, Stephen had spent at least the last hour fidgeting.

"I'm sure she's fine," I assured him. We walked down the hallway toward the infirmary, close enough that our shoulders touched. I revelled in the heat of Stephen by my side and squashed the absurd impulse to hold his hand.

I felt like a teenager with a crush; my only comfort was that Stephen was similarly affected, based on the number of times I'd caught him sneaking glances in my direction and grinning.

Eventually, I was sure, the real world would intrude, but for now I was going to enjoy the fact that Stephen was alive, and here, and that we were once again on the same wavelength. Actually it was a brilliant new wavelength that I had every intention of exploring thoroughly at every opportunity.

The dire wolf was happy to see us when we finally made it down to the quarantine rooms. She was awake, and her ears pricked forward as soon as we walked in. Her leg was still heavily bandaged, but she stood up with little difficulty and licked Stephen's hand when he reached her.

She stretched out on the rug in front of the sofa when Stephen sat on it, and he scratched behind her ears. With her eyes closed in pleasure and her tongue hanging out, she looked almost like an over-sized family dog, and not a vicious prehistoric predator.

I held back and examined her with a critical eye. She was about 4ft tall at the shoulder, and looked like she weighed about 15 stone. Her coat was a glossy black, her body broad with comparatively short legs, like a bulldog, and her head was much larger in comparison to her body than a modern wolf's. That massive head held jaws strong enough to crush a human thigh-bone with little effort. In all, she seemed a perfect specimen of canus dirus.

"So, what are you going to call her?" I asked Stephen with a grin, as I lowered myself into the armchair opposite the sofa. "Blackie, maybe?"

Stephen stopped petting the wolf to stare at me incredulously, and the wolf, obviously missing the attention, dropped her head to her paws with a noise that sounded remarkably like "Humph!"

Stephen laughed and resumed his ministrations, burying his hands in her thick ruff and scratching under her chin. She leaned her body up against his legs with a satisfied sigh, and I took the opportunity to watch him unobserved.

This was the Stephen I had missed. He was happy, relaxed, and utterly enthralled with the beast at his feet. He was giving the wolf one of his rare smiles, and I had to close my eyes against an irrational surge of jealousy. That smile hadn't been directed my way for a long time, and I had only myself to blame.

I took a deep breath. That was in the past. There was nothing I could do to change it, but we were better now. Last night Stephen had given me another chance, not just to repair our old friendship but to move forward into something I had never dreamed I could have with him. And miracle of miracles, he didn't seem to have changed his mind this morning. Everything would be fine; no, everything would be great. I refused to accept anything less.

"Hey, Cutter," Stephen called, startling me out of my thoughts. He had abandoned the sofa to check on the wolf's leg. "Take a look at this."

When I came up beside him, I saw that Stephen had pulled back the wrapping on the dire wolf's leg and I leaned down to get a closer look. The wound was completely closed. Only an angry red line of scar tissue remained where only yesterday there had been a deep gash.

"That healed way too fast," I murmured. The wolf looked over her shoulder at us curiously. Stephen removed the rest of the bandage - it served no purpose now. He looked up at me, clearly worried about the implications.

Suddenly, Connor's voice came over the intercom. "Er . . . you guys might want to see this."

Stephen and I exchanged glances, and after Stephen gave the wolf a final pat on the head, we exited.

Connor was sitting at a table outside the quarantine room, laptop in front of him. Abby sat next to him, looking speculatively at the wolf through the glass wall.

Connor looked up and fidgeted. "OK, so Lester had me pull up the video feeds from the bunker. This is from the cage room, right after . . ."

He trailed off, but I knew what he didn't say. Right after Stephen had locked himself inside to save me.

Connor flushed. "I wouldn't ask you to watch, but . . ."

Stephen interrupted him. "It's OK, Connor. What is it?"

Connor turned back to the laptop and hit a few keys as Stephen and I sat down. "Just watch the wolf."

There on the screen was my nightmare revisited. Thankfully the sound was off, so I didn't have to hear that horrible almost-last conversation between us. I watched as Stephen backed toward the centre of the room and a flash of black on the side of the screen caught my eye.

There was the dire wolf. She looked between screen-Stephen and the creatures, seeming to size up the competition, then with lightning speed she lunged at the raptor closest to her. Stephen and I watched, amazed, as she tore the leg off the raptor and flung it across the room, where it landed by his feet.

"That was deliberate!" Stephen exclaimed.

"She was giving you a weapon," I said in awe. The dire wolf made quick work of the raptors, despite the gash she received as the second raptor caught her off-guard.

As we watched, she clearly looked over at Stephen and at the future predators before turning to deal with the smilodon, as if checking up to make sure Stephen was doing OK. I gasped when Stephen was pulled up by the future predator and grabbed his hand, only to stare in disbelief as the dire wolf tore across the room to grab him by the ankle and pull them down.

"So that's how I got down," Stephen said softly at my side, squeezing my fingers in reassurance. "I had wondered."

The fight continued to its dramatic conclusion, and I shuddered at how close Stephen had needed to get to the mer creature to finish it off.

We watched the screen as Stephen bound the wolf's wound and led her limping out of the room, after which Connor turned the video off. He turned in his seat to look at us.

"That wasn't domestication or training," Stephen said firmly. "That was strategy. That was human level intelligence."

I nodded. "I have to agree." Then I turned to Stephen, remembering how the wolf had grabbed his ankle. "Are you sure your ankle's OK?"

Stephen scooted his chair back and lifted his right leg up so his booted foot rested on his left knee. "It's fine - just a little sore and slightly bruised. Although now this makes much more sense."

Stephen indicated his boot and we all leaned in to look. Scored into the leather were half a dozen small indentations. Tooth-marks.

Abby drew a shocked breath. "Stephen, that wolf bit through a raptor's hind leg like it was a twig!"

Stephen nodded. "And yet she didn't break the skin on my ankle - in fact, she didn't even break the leather. She bit just barely hard enough to pull me down."

I shuddered as the image of Stephen being grabbed from above played through my head and thanked whoever might be listening that the dire wolf had been there.

Her behaviour still made no sense, however. And the sheer control needed to grip Stephen's leg tight enough to pull him away from the future predator without damaging the bone . . .

I needed more information. "Abby, are the lab reports back yet?"

She grabbed a handful of papers off the table. "Yeah, DNA matches what we know of canus dirus. Female, full-grown but young. A little larger than the type specimen, but not impossibly so. Clean of all pathogens that we know how to detect."

I rubbed my face and glanced into the quarantine room, where the wolf was still lying on the rug with her head on her paws, eyes closed. "So what we have is an individual from a species that went extinct ten thousand years ago, exhibiting accelerated healing, human level intelligence, and an apparent altruistic streak." I gave Stephen a tight smile, which he returned. "Clearly we're not dealing with just another prehistoric creature. Any ideas?"

Connor and Abby shook their heads.

"Genetic manipulation?" Stephen suggested.

"Possibly," I conceded, "Although that would likely mean she's from the future, rather than the past, which doesn't make much sense, unless she's a clone."

"Why don't we just ask her?" Connor offered.

The three of us looked at him, incredulous.

"You said she had human level intelligence!" he said.

Abby rolled her eyes. "That doesn't mean she knows English, Connor. She's from ten thousand years in the past!"

In the silence that succeeded Abby's admonishment, we all jumped at a knocking sound on the glass of the quarantine room. I spun around, vaguely seeing the others do the same.

There, in the locked quarantine room, stood a young woman in a tee shirt and jeans. She looked to be in her late twenties, with olive skin and long wavy hair the same inky black as the wolf's fur.

There was no sign of the dire wolf.

"Actually, I do know English," she said calmly, her voice tinny through the glass. I vaguely noted that she spoke with an American accent. "And if y'all are going to talk about me I'd like to be involved in the conversation."

Connor was the first to recover from our shock. "A werewolf!" he nearly shouted. "Awesome!"

Lester stood in the quarantine room, soldiers on either side of him, and glared at the young woman who had replaced the dire wolf.

Connor had already pulled up the security footage from the quarantine room. The dire wolf's ears had pricked up when Connor began running the cage room video, and while we had been discussing possible explanations for the wolf's bizarre behaviour, she had stood up and moved closer to the door, head cocked as if listening.

What happened next wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-budget special effects film, and had made Connor start bouncing in his seat. The air around the wolf began to shimmer, like the air above a pavement on a hot day, and then the wolf's form had seemed to melt into the shape of a young woman, fully clothed with the exception of her bare feet.

This same young woman now sat on the sofa in the quarantine room, legs folded up under her, and grinned up at Lester as if she had no cares in the world.

Stephen shifted by my side and I rubbed my fingers against the back of his hand, briefly, in comfort. I knew he was feeling much the same as I was - shocked, and faintly betrayed.

"What is your name?" Lester snapped.

"Maria Guidry," she replied. "But folks call me Ria."

"Who do you work for?"

The woman's eyes twinkled and she gave an impish grin before replying. "Work for? I don't work for anybody. I'm just having fun!"

Connor snickered, and hid his mouth behind his hand. The rest of us looked at her blankly.

"Oh come on!" she said in exasperation. "Tom Baker? Doctor Who? I've been waiting so long for someone to ask me who I work for so I could use that line, and when I finally do get to use it, in front of a bunch of Brits no less, he's - " She waved her arm in Connor's direction, " - the only one who gets it. Y'all really don't have a sense of humour over here, do you?"

Lester redoubled his glare. "Miss Guidry, I assure you there is nothing humorous about this situation."

"OK, fine." She sighed. "I really don't work for anyone. I was just minding my own business, wandering around in the past, when some asshole shot me up full of tranquilisers and locked me in a cage with nasty electric bars. Granted, I was a wolf at the time, but it was still quite rude.

"So then that weaselly-looking guy kept me there for three weeks - three really boring weeks, I might add - until those folks showed up," she nodded over to where Stephen, Abby, Connor, Jenny and I were standing, "and suddenly the bars were gone and there were creatures running around and people running around and I was still trying to figure out how to get out of there when Mr. Tall, Dark, Handsome, and Idiotic over there decides to try to get himself killed. What was I supposed to do?" Stunned silence greeted the end of this speech. The woman seemed to be enjoying our discomfort immensely.

"Why didn't you let me know you were human after the fight?" Stephen asked, quietly.

The woman - Ria - turned her face our direction and her eyes softened. "Changing forms while injured is really not a good idea. I had to wait for the gash to heal a bit first. Plus, I didn't really have the energy for it then."

"Where were you when Leek's men caught you?" I asked.

"I take it Leek's the weaselly-looking megalomaniac with the fetish for collecting extinct animals?"

I nodded, inwardly appreciating the accuracy of that assessment.

"I don't know," she replied. "Natural history was never really my thing. All I know is that there were mammoths, and lions, and saber-toothed cats, and other dire wolves, and giant sloths and really shaggy horses."

Late Pleistocene then. Just where I thought she'd been from when I thought she was just a dire wolf. Did the areas she travelled in have something to with the forms she could use?

"How'd you get there?" I asked.

"I went through a sparkly portal thing. I was curious."

"Where was it?" Lester asked.

"Um . . . somewhere in Brecon Beacons National Park. Which is a great name, by the way. Sorry I can't be more specific, but I was a wolf at the time, so directions are a bit difficult."

"What were you doing in Wales?"

"Sight-seeing."

"I assume from your accent that you are not from Britain?"

"Nope. New Orleans. I'm just here on vacation."

"So let me get this straight - you came to Britain from Louisiana on vacation, just happen to stumble across an anomaly, decide to go through it rather than reporting it to the authorities, end up in the . . ." Lester waved his hand at me.

"Late Pleistocene," I supplied.

"Right," Lester continued. "Then you got captured by Leek's men and held in his bunker until Stephen and Professor Cutter showed up?"

"Yeah, that about covers it," Ria agreed.

"I love how we're all ignoring the obvious here," Jenny snapped from where she had been standing silent and watchful in the corner. "How the hell does she turn into a giant wolf?"

Ria finally looked uncomfortable. "That's a long story, really. Not that I mind telling it, but . . . Short answer is, I'm a were-wolf."

"I knew it!" Connor shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

Ria smiled at him.

Lester massaged his forehead with his fingers. "I'm getting a headache. All right, you -" he pointed at Ria, "stay here and don't try to escape."

Ria put her hands up in a placating gesture, plastering a 'who, me?' look on her face.

"You," Lester indicated the soldiers, "keep an eye on her. The rest of you, get back to work while I decide what to do with our guest."

Jenny seemed relieved to get out of the room. Abby had to drag Connor along. He was muttering about all the questions he wanted to ask.

Stephen and I lingered as the rest followed Lester out the door. "I'll see about getting some food sent in for you to eat," Stephen told Ria, "and maybe some books or something."

The young woman smiled then, not the amused smirk from before, but a brilliant, sincere smile. "Thanks, I appreciate it."

Stephen hesitated once more. "Thank you for saving my life," he said softly.

"You're welcome," she answered seriously. Then she grinned again. "Even if you are an idiot," she said, laughing.

Stephen nodded in acknowledgement, and walked over to the doorway. I nodded to the girl as well, hoping she could read my own gratitude in my face. She smiled at us both and waved as we closed the door behind us.

Once outside the door, I went into the observation room to watch Ria as she settled back on the couch. Stephen stepped up beside me, our shoulders touching. I leaned into his warmth.

"So, werewolves," he said, conversationally.

"Aye. Just when I think I can't find anything crazier than what we've already seen."

"She did still save my life." Stephen pointed out, softly.

"I know. And I'm more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Let's just hope Lester sees it that way too."

Suddenly Stephen's face morphed into a study of embarrassed horror. "Oh my God, I was petting her!"

I couldn't help it. I laughed. Long and hard and just for the joy of being able to again. "Don't worry," I told Stephen, as soon as I caught my breath. "I bet she liked it."

And with a wink at a flustered Stephen, I headed back up to my office. Life was good.