The forest.
A pulse from deep in the trees. A whisper in the roots. A promise of freedom, wind, and earth that remembers my name before I ever knew it.
The pull isn’t cruel. It’snecessary.
Fear punches up from my belly, not human logic but raw, animal alarm. The door is a mouth. The forest is a promise. The promise wins.
My legs move before I realize it. The wards shiver, and the wood complains as I shoulder the door. It gives. Cold air slaps my face, and I launch into it becauseoutis the only word that makes sense.
My muscles stretch, and my paws hit loam.
I run.
Through the trees.
Through the dark.
Into the wild that wants me.
“Scarlett!” Reid’s shout follows me, human first, then—breaking bones, tearing seams—nothuman. He’s behind me, heavier, faster, an obsidian shadow cutting through the silvered path of dawn.
I run until the forest opens. Leaves part. Needles spring. Earth drums under my paws, and the world clarifies into a thousand tiny truths: dew thawing on moss, vole heartbeats under soil, the exact place a fox passed this way at moonrise. Wind pours over my snout, and my scent braids with his, amber-hot, strange yet familiar.
He pulls up alongside me, huge and black. Every hair on my body erupts with a mix of joy and terror. I bare my teeth without quite meaning to. He doesn’t answer with teeth. He brushes his shoulder into mine—solid and deliberate—and the contact is a sentence my wolf understands:here, with you.
I stumble and stop, chest heaving, legs shaking with too much of everything. The silence of the forest roars around us, waiting.
Reid lowers his massive head, amber eyes on mine, and lets out a sound that isn’t a growl or a bark. It’s a question. A reassurance.Stay.
I’m shaking so hard that my paws slip on the loam. Panic pings around my skull like a trapped bird. I don’t know this body. I don’t know these rules. I don’t know?—
He steps closer. Not crowding.Encircling.His chest touches mine. His heat is an anchor as his breath mists my muzzle. He paces a slow half-circle, shoulder skimming my side, then stops where I can lean if I want.
Everything in me wants. I press into him, and a tiny whine breaks free of my throat, humiliating and helpless and true.
With me,his presence says. Or maybe the bond says it. Or maybe I do.
He angles his head, nose skimming my cheek, and the terror loosens one notch. I try a breath. Then another. My claws flex into the soil, and the earth holds.
Good,the feeling comes. It’s not a word but a warm place offered.
When the next wave of too-bright hits, I don’t bolt. I push my forehead into his ruff and breathe his scent like medicine. He threads his neck over mine, a blackout curtain against the sky.
The wrong scent of thorns and rot and bones rustles the ferns thirty yards off. My wolf snarls, the sound ripping from my chest like a saw through wood.
Reid steps in front of me, shoulders high, a low warning rolling through his chest. His snarl vibrates like a vow, a promise:she’s mine.
The knowledge slots into place like a key sliding into a well-worn keyhole—I am his. And he’s mine.
A flicker of gray fur, spiked with burrs and briar in the shadows. Watching us.Close. Deliberate. He doesn’t lunge. Hewaits.
A pause…
Then the gray wolf retreats, leaving only the taint of rot behind.
But I know he’s not gone. He was delivering a message.I’m still here.You can’t run forever.
What does he want? Why did he attack me?
