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I CAUGHT MY DOG HIDING SOMETHING—AND IT CHANGED EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEWI’d been blaming the foxes.For weeks, something had been stealing vegetables from the edge of the garden—perfectly nibbled carrots, overturned lettuce, even a snapped bean vine. I was setting up traps and muttering curses every morning, convinced we had a clever little thief living in the woods behind the shed.Turns out, I was half right.It wasn’t until I went looking for my dog, Runa, that I found the truth.She hadn’t come in for breakfast. Unusual, but not unheard of—she was fiercely independent, especially since her last litter didn’t survive. I figured she was probably sleeping in the barn again, curled under the old straw bales like she sometimes did when the world got too loud.But when I pushed the barn door open, I heard the faintest rustling behind the crates.And then… a sound. Not barking. Not growling.Whimpering.I crouched down, heart kicking, and there she was—Runa, hunched low and still, with two tiny baby rabbits tucked between her paws. They were so small they barely looked real. Eyes closed, breathing slow. She wasn’t hurting them.She was nurturing them.Like they were her own.And maybe they were—at least now. She glanced up at me with those wide amber eyes, protective but pleading. I didn’t say a word. I just sat beside her, trying to understand how a dog who’d lost her own babies… had somehow found these instead.But when I leaned in closer to check the bunnies, something caught my eye behind the crate.A trail of fur. A flash of red.And suddenly, I realized—

At dawn’s first light, when the rosy fingers of Aurora still danced across the eastern sky, I strode toward my…

by Caroline Mitchell