Andras watched the human girl crouched in the snow. He'd watched her for days now, trying to see if she was the one. A one, he supposed.
The pickings had been slim this far north, but slimmer in the south. He had passed too many small, warm towns with fire and iron and dogs there, and dogs did not like wolves who came too close to their masters.
In the north there were smaller towns and it was colder, and there fewer animals this late in the winter. If he had wanted to die by dog pack he could have stayed in Prythian and annoyed Amarantha personally.
There had been a cottage - ramshackle but tended, with a little fence that the girl who saw him stepped behind. He had stopped and waited for her to do something - grab the hatchet by her gate, maybe, or shout an alarm - but she had just watched until another girl called her back inside to the fire.
This human girl was hungry and dogless, far from cottages and fires, desperate enough to venture into the forest in winter. Even Andras could tell she was too thin, and her boots bent oddly, as if her feet didn't fill them up. Humans, in his experience, were fussy about the fit of their footwear. She shivered in the cold too, tiny ones, like she had grown so used to her discomfort that her body barely acknowledged it. The bow she held was better treated than her clothing, and the fletching on her arrows showed care.
There were deer ahead, in a little clearing, and in the old days he might have led her to them, or left one dead and steaming near her, and maybe followed her home and done a thousand helpful things until he was bored or she stopped being appreciative. He was not a high fae to scorn work or the amusement that could follow when humans grew less cautious and forgot he was a wild thing.
The girl might be a wild thing too, he thought, watching her creep to the edges of the clearing, too-large boots and all. She saw the deer and stopped, assessing. He slunk around the edge of the clearing until he could see her and the herd.
The wind shifted, fluttering the bits of hair that had escaped her hood and carrying her scent to the deer.
They flung their heads up, ears and noses twitching, and the girl raised her bow.
Andras howled and leapt, putting the deer into flight and himself in the girl's sights. He saw her eyes flick past him after the deer, already gone, and back to him. He saw her hesitate, even with the quick flash of fury. He had chased her food away.
Another wolf would have fought. Another fae would have laughed. He didn't know for sure what a human would do, but he could guess.
For a long moment there was only the wind and the cold and the girl and the wolf.
Her face hardened, and she loosed her arrow.