Dax spent the following week in the woods with his brethren. Working hard to create lumber and sleeping on-site, the desire to return to camp had vanished. He resented Tess for her opinion of him. He was more than an animal; he was a man. As much as he had tried to occupy his mind, Dax found it was imposable to keep his thoughts from wandering back to Tess. First, he thought of how much he hated her. How much he would make her pay for making him mad. If she thought him so horrible and damaging to her soul, he would take her as often as possible, demean her the way the others did.
Then he would think of how bad she had made him feel, how much he longed to hold her, to have her smile at him the way she used to, to give herself to him willingly. By the end of the week, Dax felt
