A/N: Last chapter will be lucky number thirteen? Truth be told, I don't know. Yay! Thirty reviews! Keep going – maybe I can reach 50? Heh. I'm a bit of a review whore. Sorry.

By the way, loads of love to all my consistent fans. I love all y'all. Love, love love. Anyway. Chapter thirteen.

My eyes were closed. I felt pain. Was that right? Death was supposed to take away your pain, but I definitely was not painless. Also, my body felt uncomfortably heavy. I tried to get up, and sent a jolt of pain shooting down my spine. I let myself down again with a small whine. I couldn't move. I lay down again and curled up, closing my eyes. Waiting for death.

I slept for a long time, and awoke in a haze of heat and fever. Sensation and thought was distant. Water. I needed water. I tried to get up again and met with a screech of protesting, cramped muscles. There was a long gash along my side. Blood leaked from it. I licked it, hoping that it would give me some moisture. It was salty and dried my mouth. I saw a puddle of water just out of reach, and managed to crawl to it, agonizingly. Too tired to drink much, I lapped it a little and let my head fall into the shallow, muddy pool. I slept again.

I wasn't dead, that much was clear. And much as I wished I was, I was living on instinct, my thought burned away by fever. I had attacked the Fauns. Why had they not killed me? Had they intended me to suffer before dying, helpless, motionless, dead of hunger? I hardly even cared. I would have welcomed death at that moment. But there was part of me that did not want to die.

I could not tell you how long I lay there, suffering, crawling for short distances to find pockets of water. My stomach ached, and I ate grass to soothe it, but it did not help. There was nothing to soothe the savage ache within me. I waited for an end that would not come.

My days blended together in a haze of nightmares and fever and pain. There was nothing to distinguish one day from the next. But then came a change. I woke, and there was sound. Voices. Whispers. I struggled to raise my head, my eyes swollen with the bites of flies, the gash on my side infected and festering. I could not move, but then a small eye looked into mine – an eye surrounded by thick gray fur. I startled and tried to crawl away.

"Easy," said a voice. "Don't hurt yourself. We're here to help."

"Daddy, can we take him back to the den and take care of him?" whined a small voice, that of a female cub. Something ached at my heart in that voice. My dreams were shattered. "I'm hot, and he looks like he's hurt bad. Mommy will be able to help him."

"Come on, we'll help you up," said the deeper voice, nudging my shoulder gently. "I shook my head and struggled to speak.

"You don't want me," I said. "I'm bad…bad luck. I've done terrible things…you don't want me as part of your pack,"

"Nonsense," said the deeper voice. "If you can't move, I'll carry you. I'm not going to let you die."

"You're not bad," piped in the high voice. "People are bad. People killed my sister, and they hurt you, too. What's your name, anyway?"

"I don't remember," I whispered. "I don't have a name."

"I'll call you Yigil," said the pup. "Mama says it means "redeemed." And you're not bad. You can't be, because Mama says…"

As unconsciousness threatened to take me again when the larger wolf lifted my scrawny form onto his back, I struggled to hear the pup's last words. "Mama says that no one is evil," she said. "No one is evil. But my name," she said proudly, "is Darcie Destineé, or just Darcie."

Darcie Destineé. Dark Fate. The irony did not escape me. I laughed, harshly, bitterly. It seemed that I would survive after all. It seemed that I was a survivor, no matter how much I wanted to die. I would not escape my guilt just yet.

No one is evil, I thought, and laughed.

END.