Unknown POV
He had learned a long time ago that when a wolf is quiet, you don’t celebrate—you prepare. Because it’s not the growl that kills you. It’s the silence before the pounce.
And the forest had gone silent.
That night, after returning from a dead drop point in the hills where no signal bled and no satellites swept low, he felt it—not fear exactly, because fear implied vulnerability, and he had trained too long, killed too many, and vanished too well to be afraid of creatures that bled just like men. But what gripped him wasn’t comfort either. It was something colder. Something ancient. An instinct honed over two decades of ghostwork and government lies, of training with mercenaries who spoke in scars and silence. He knew what it meant when the wind stopped moving.
He was being hunted. Not watched, just hunted.
He stared out the small cabin’s cracked window, eyes flicking from tree to tree, from shadows to shapes that didn’t move quite right. He didn’t see anything. But his gut
