As the sun pushed through the mist, the trees thinned just enough to reveal a marshy dip in the forest floor—a wide, shallow ditch, thick with mud and tangled brush. Samantha blinked through the haze. Then her flashlight caught a flash of white, barely visible through the grime.
Heart racing, she stumbled forward, boots squelching in the wet earth as she reached the edge of the ditch. Her breath snagged. A scrap of fur—mud-soaked, matted, unmistakably white—lay half-buried in the muck. Blood streaked the ground around it. She sank to her knees, the weight of hope shattering all at once.