Near Gatstaf, Halana and Alena investigate killings that appear to fit an old pattern: disturbed wards, missing people and a werewolf in the woods. Their experience is useful, but their first interpretation is wrong. Boot prints and paw prints do not establish that the missing cathar transformed. The evidence points in different directions because more than one danger is moving through the same landscape.
The missing cathar's wife is bound to Ormendahl. Her husband has concealed the victims, hoping to save her, and his intervention during the confrontation costs him his life. A werewolf then intervenes against the possessed woman. The hunters survive with help from a creature they had expected to fight.
The stranger controls her transformation and commands the surrounding pack. She demands that the hunters stop killing its members, without pretending the encounter has made them friends. This is an early warning about the crisis: familiar categories can conceal an enemy or obscure an unexpected protector. Reading the scene matters more than deciding in advance what every monster must be.