Prologue

Rosangela awoke to the rays of the sun fall on her face. Slowly, she peeled her eyes open. The sudden brightness of the morning sun made her eyes squint. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the strong sunlight. After her vision become clear, Rosangela’s eyes made a quick scan to her surroundings. She gasped with surprise when she realized that she was lying in a clearing of the woods now.

‘Where am I? How did I get here?’ she wondered hazily.

Rosangela racked her brains, trying to recall exactly what happened to her before. However, she could not remember anything.

‘Wherever I am and no matter how I got here, one thing is for sure, I must get out of here soon,’ she told herself.

Scrambling to her feet, Rosangela began to slosh through the muddy track in the forest in the hope of finding something familiar that would lead her home. She had been walking for ages, yet so far, she had no luck with getting out of the woods, let alone find her way home.

In the west, the sun just went down and night fell. However, Rosangela was still wandering aimlessly around the forest. A sudden shiver coursed its way down her spine as she heard the sound of wolves howling in the distance. Rosangela quickened her pace in a vain attempt to get out of the woods as fast as possible. Fear gnawed at her soul as the sound of the howl of the wolves was getting closer and closer. At last, Rosangela broke into a run. She didn’t realize that there was a long root protruding from the ground until her foot got caught on the root and she stumbled then fell head first to the ground.

“Ouch! That hurt!” she groaned with pain.

Rosangela was just about to pick herself up when out of the blue a pack of wolves, twenty at least, came out from behind the trees and began to crowd around her. Those wolves’ hackles rose, indicating they were very angry. Maybe because she had unintentionally trespassed into their territory.

Rosangela rose shakily to her feet. She had an overwhelming urge to run away, but she realized she was surrounded on all sides, so she couldn’t go anywhere.

The wolves started to circle around Rosangela, baring their teeth and growled at her.

Rosangela, who was standing in the middle of those wolves, was shaking like a leaf. She had never been so frightened in her life like this.

‘Oh God, please help me!’ she prayed silently.

At that very moment, a long wolf howl was suddenly heard, echoing through the woods. Not long after that, a large wolf emerged from the shadows. Unlike the other wolves whose fur were grey, this wolf was almost pure white in colour. The wolf was also twice the size of the others.

Upon the arrival of the white wolf, the other wolves suddenly stopped circling around Rosangela and all of them lowered their heads and shuffled their front paws forward until they were lying down on the ground, as if they wanted to show their respect for the larger wolf.

The white wolf bared its teeth in a snarl. Immediately, the other wolves got to their paws and parted to make way for the big wolf.

Rosangela screamed out in terror as the huge white wolf drew nearer and pounced on her.