Chapter—The Road To Somewhere.

Rebecca's POV

He was not what I expected.

I had been bracing for someone like the men Damon sent — hard-eyed, impatient, looking through me. But Rowan stood at the door with a calm, measured presence, and when he saw my face with the swollen eye and the dried blood on my cheek, something moved in his expression. He looked at me the way you look at a person, not a package.

"Rebecca?"

"Yes."

"I'm Rowan. I'll be taking you." He glanced at the bag on my shoulder. "Is that everything?"

"Yes."

He nodded and stepped back. I followed him to the car. Damon was not at home to see me off. He didn't care.

I got into the back seat, closed the door and we pulled away. Damon's street disappeared behind us and felt nothing.

Rowan drove quietly. After a while he spoke.

"Are you in pain? Your face—"

"I'm fine," I said.

"There's a first aid kit under the seat."

I said nothing. Instead, I looked out the window.

"Have you eaten today?" he tried.

"I'm fine," I said again.

He did not push. He let the silence be, which was its own kind of consideration. The city thinned around us with buildings dropping away, streetlights growing sparse, the road narrowing — and then the city was simply gone. Trees on both sides, dense and dark, their branches closing overhead until the headlights barely reached the canopy.

I pressed my face to the cold window glass.

"Where are we going?" I asked. The first full sentence I had offered.

"An estate. About twenty minutes further."

"Whose?"

"The man in the contract."

"What kind of man?"

He paused, then answered carefully. "The kind you don't need to be afraid of,"

"That's not really an answer."

"No," he said. "It isn't. But it's the truth."

I turned back to the window. The darkness between the trees was complete — no lights, no houses, nothing I recognised. My palms were damp against my knees. My body beginning to have little goosebumps.

Then the moon appeared through a gap in the canopy, and I forgot everything for a second.

Full and enormous and low, throwing silver light across a valley I had never seen, and it was so beautiful it actually hurt. I pressed my hand to the glass and stared.

Then the gates appeared and the moment was gone.

It was made of iron, enormous. Worked into the shapes of wolves in mid-stride — massive, detailed, their jaws wide. The gates opened on their own as the car approached. No guard. No switch. Nothing.

"How are they…" I sat forward. "Who opened those?"

"They respond to the vehicle," Rowan said.

"Gates don't just open by themselves. That's not normal."

"A lot of things here aren't normal," he said quietly. "I need you to stay calm when we get inside. Can you do that?"

"What do you mean a lot of things aren't normal? What are you saying to me right now?"

"I'm saying stay calm." He drove through without slowing. "I'll explain what I can. But first I need you to breathe."

I watched through the rear window as the gates swung closed. The iron wolves met in the middle. The sound went through the car seat and into my spine.

There was no going back through those gates without him.

The path beyond was wide and torchlit, with real fire burning in iron brackets along stone walls, throwing moving orange light. Ancient trees on both sides, roots breaking the surface of the ground in thick dark coils. The smell was strange and alive in a way that was nothing like the city.

Then I saw the first wolf and my brain went completely blank.

"Rowan." My voice came out high and thin. "Rowan, there is a wolf right there." I said pointing.

"I know."

"That is a real wolf. That is… it's enormous, it's right there, it's right next to the car—"

"Rebecca."

"Why is there a wolf? Where are we? What is this place? What do you want to do with me?"

"Rebecca, listen…"

"No! No, I need you to tell me right now — where am I? What is happening? Who are these people?"

"Breathe."

"I cannot breathe! There is a wolf the size of a car running next to us and you keep saying breathe!"

"Rebecca." He stopped the car. Then turned fully in the seat and looked at me. "Listen to me carefully. You are not going to be harmed. I swear that to you. But I need you to get out of this car and walk with me, and to do that you need to stop panicking long enough to hear me."

I pressed myself against the door. My hands were shaking. Sweat was running down the back of my neck.

"What are those things?" I whispered.

"Wolves," he said.

"People don't have wolves. People don't… wolves aren't…"

"These people do," he said. "And they will not touch you. You have my word."

I stared at him. He held my gaze without blinking.

I had no choice. I had understood that before I even got in the car.

"Fine," I said. "Fine. But if something happens to me…"

"Nothing will happen to you," he said, and got out.

The courtyard of the estate was the most impossible thing I had ever seen.

People, men and women in dark fitted clothing, moving with a physical readiness that was not like any person I had seen before. Some carried weapons and moved about like it was ordinary. A woman sharpened a blade on a stone, arm moving in long steady strokes, not even looking at what she was doing.

And the wolves, they were everywhere. Moving through the courtyard the same way the people did. Free and unbothered. A massive black wolf lay stretched across the entrance steps with its head on its paws. Two grey ones trotted through a group of people who stepped aside without a word. A man crouched beside a brown wolf and said something low in its ear and the wolf turned its head to look at him as though it understood.

I stopped walking.

"I can't," I said. "I can't walk through that."

"You can," Rowan said. "Stay beside me. Don't run."

"Don't run." I laughed in a strange sound. "Don't run. There are wolves everywhere and you're telling me not to run."

"If you run, their instinct kicks in. You don't want that."

"What instinct? What does that mean? What will they do?"

"They won't do anything as long as you stay calm," he said. "Walk with me."

Then, before I could say another word, something shifted near the eastern wall.

A man stood there in a dark jacket, tall and completely still. For a moment I thought he was just a man. Then his body began to change.

I do not have words for what I saw. His shape elongated, his shoulders widened, the jacket fell away, and then there was no man standing there — there was a wolf, grey and enormous, shaking itself once before it trotted away into the dark.

"What!" I grabbed Rowan's arm with both hands. "What was that? What just happened? That man just… he just… Rowan, that man just turned into a wolf."

"Yes," Rowan said.

"That's not… that can't… people don't just turn into wolves."

"They do here," he said. "Rebecca, I know. I know how this looks. But I need you to keep walking."

"Keep walking." My voice was shaking badly. "You want me to keep walking after everything I've seen? What are you people? What is this place? Am I dreaming? Am I—"

"You're not dreaming."

"Then what is happening to me? Someone tell me what is happening to me!"

Suddenly, a low, resonant sound rolled through the courtyard. It was not a howl. It was something deeper, like the earth clearing its throat. The trees at the edge of the estate actually bent, their tops dipping in the windless air, bowing toward the entrance.

I pressed both hands over my mouth.

"The trees," I said through my fingers. "The trees just moved."

"That's a signal to show that the Alpha would be arriving soon," Rowan said very quietly. "Come inside. Right now."

He took my arm and walked me toward the entrance, my legs moving because they had to. Sweat ran cold down my back. My hands were shaking so badly I could hear them against the strap of my bag.

Inside, a woman named Martha took over. She was brisk and precise and looked at my face with the same careful expression Rowan had worn at the door. She led me upstairs without asking questions, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for me all day.

In the room she showed me, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall, my hands shaking between my knees.

A man had turned into a wolf. The trees had bowed. I was somewhere that had no name in any world I had ever known.

I did not sleep for a very long time.