Having turned the zwoot herd, the WolfRiders now hunt! Cutter, Skywise and Pike capture a "small" one and deliver it to Savah, who enters its mind and the SunFolk have another.

Leetah has an epiphany but decides to wait till things calm down to share her decision.

Scouter & Dewshine have captured another (huge) zwoot, but as they relax, it gets its second wind. Scouter, caught in the ropes, goes flying. Dewshine leaps to the rescue with her dagger but is struck by the fear-maddened zwoot. Leetah, unthinking, rushes in to save her. The zwoot is killed by the WorfRider archers (One-Eye and Strongbow).

Cutter begs Leetah to heal his little cousin, bargaining the offer of leaving it she'll just save Dewshine. Leetah snaps at him and carries the young female into her hut for healing. After she recovers a bit from the healing, Leetah notices Cutter's absence and tracks him down. As they begin to argue, she says his soulname, Tam, aloud and suddenly she knows what a soulname is and that she's accepted Cutter as her mate. Before they can share the good news, Nightrunner runs off with her on his back.

In the hills surrounding Sorrow's End, Rayek has witnessed the zwoot hunt and Savah send her spirit out to let him know that Leetah has chosen. Rayek sets off into the burning waste to find his own sorrow's end.

That night Cutter and Leetah finally answer the call of Recognition to be discovered the next morning by her father, SunToucher. In an act of foreshadowing, while Leetah and Cutter consummate their relationship and the rest of the elves revel, Savah "sends out" her consciousness into the void, searching for she-knows-not-what, something frightens her back to her handmaiden, Ahdri.