The Vermont blizzard had been raging for hours, a white wall swallowing sound, direction, and hope. Wind slammed the cabin walls like a living thing, rattling windows and howling through the trees. Ethan Langley stood by the fireplace, staring into the struggling flames, when something cut through the chaos.
Not thunder. Not wind.
A scratch.
Deliberate. Measured. Three short strokes, a pause, then again. Communication, not chaos.
Ethan reacted before thinking—years as a Navy SEAL had wired him that way. He reached for the knife at his side and moved toward the door. The scratching came again, urgent now. He pulled the door open—and the storm hit like a wall of ice.
There she was.
A German Shepherd, black and gold, soaked, ribs showing, fur stiff with ice. Her eyes locked onto his—not wild, not aggressive, but calculating, exhausted. In her mouth, something impossibly small. She stepped forward and dropped it at his feet.
A puppy.
Tiny, shivering, barely breathing. Before Ethan could even react, the dog vanished into the storm. He scooped up the pup, pressed it against his chest, and moved instinctively—feeding the fire, layering blankets, warming water. And then he realized: she wasn’t abandoning her litter. She was testing him.
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