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Cigarette smoke floated mystically along the shabby walls of the once luxurious room. The faded green paint everywhere, blotched with bullet holes framed by a web of cracks, seemed liquid and voluminous, and the elongated shadows on the high ceiling seemed about to fall on the only source of light - a dim lamp that stood in the middle of an oblong table with the same amount of time as a lamp, and everything else in an abandoned estate, living out its life alone behind a forest belt.

Throwing my cigarette butt on the floor, I stamped it down and moved away from the large window, the window sill of which was littered with glass fragments with traces of both fresh and not very wolf blood.

Taking on a homestead guarded by purebred wolves turned out to be easier than I thought. Their boss showed some kind of trust to Alyosha, who called him with an answer to a seemingly long-lost offer, which he personally had never been voiced. The old wolf even believed that Alyosha was doing it behind m