She Wolf

Ylva flinched when she heard Mother shout. It was unexpected, and the sound was so full of fear and pain, it took her a moment to realize what it was. A second shout told her she hadn’t imagined the first, and when it cut short there was only silence from the hut.
Crouching in the snow-covered bracken at the edge of the forest, Ylva kept her arm around her dog, Geri, and stared across the track at the lopsided door of the trader’s hut. Her fingers tightened around the leatherbound handle of her axe, hard enough to make her knuckles pop.
Trees creaked and cried in the wind that flooded the mountainside.
When the door opened, a bald and bearded giant of a man emerged and stepped down into the deep snow