Chapter 923
+20 BONUS
Chapter 923
This time, Cola didn’t get away fast enough. Nicole followed him in time to spot a thin white animal racing across
the snow.
Its coat blended so well into the landscape that she nearly missed it.
Cola tore after it at full speed. He caught up with the white wolf, and they tumbled into the snow, snapping and clawing at each other.
Nicole drew her handgun, but they were already too far away for a reliable shot. She switched to a submachine gun.
Cola and the wolf rolled through the drifts, disappearing beneath the snow and springing back out. They moved too fast and stayed too close for her to aim without risking a hit on Cola.
She handed the gun to Zeph. “You take the shot.”
He was an excellent marksman. If anyone could do it, he could.
Zeph raised the weapon, but the animals kept moving, and they were now more than 200 yards away.
Nicole waited impatiently for him to fire. When he didn’t, she pulled a sniper rifle from her storage space.
Zeph wasn’t hesitating for no reason. The wolf was almost invisible against the snow, and Cola kept lunging into his line of fire.
One wrong move, and he would hit Cola instead. Nicole would never forgive him for that.
Besides, Cola seemed to be holding his own, even against a wolf.
Eventually, the two stopped fighting, either tired out or no longer interested. They stood snarling with their teeth bared, but neither lunged again.
At last, they backed away from each other.
Cola was hurt again, though each encounter seemed to leave him with fewer injuries. After all the panic he put her through, Nicole was running out of sympathy.
He clearly wasn’t outmatched, which only left her wondering why he never finished the fight.
For all its ferocity, the wolf was painfully thin.
Once Nicole calmed down, she wondered if she was being too hard on Cola.
He seemed convinced he was human, but he was still a dog. Then again, whenever she treated him like a dog, he did something almost uncannily human.
Maybe he was lonely and bored enough to see the wolf as a playmate. Perhaps all those restrictions were finally getting to him.
“Why do you think he keeps doing this?” she asked Zeph. “He used to listen.”
Zeph thought it over. “Maybe he needs company besides us. Someone like him.”
In some ways, raising a dog was like raising a child.
With one disaster after another, keeping Cola safe and fed came first. It was easy to overlook what else he might need. He loved them, but being around people wasn’t the same as having another dog for company.
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Chapter 923
+20 BONUS
Nicole frowned, unsure how to answer.
This time, she let Cola have his dinner. She decided to leave him alone and see what happened.
A few days later, he took off again.
Soon, he and the wolf were fighting their way across the snow, getting farther and farther from the house.
Nicole had had enough. She sat on the hill with the sniper rifle and watched, determined to stay out of it unless his life was in danger.
Eventually, they were too far away for her to tell whether they were fighting or playing. Cola didn’t come home for

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