The boundary

Chapter 1

The forest had no business being this quiet.

I pressed my back against the oak tree, bark biting through my thin jacket, and strained to hear something, anything beyond my own ragged breathing. The hiking trail had disappeared twenty minutes ago. Or maybe it was an hour. Time moved differently when you were lost, when the trees pressed close like they wanted to swallow you whole.

My phone was dead. Of course it was. I'd ignored the battery warning because I'd been so sure I could find that stupid rare orchid my botany professor had mentioned. Extra credit, he'd said. Easy points, he'd said. He hadn't mentioned that the coordinates would lead me into a part of the Cascade foothills that felt wrong in a way I couldn't articulate.

The silence wasn't natural. No birds. No insects. Not even the whisper of wind through the canopy above.

I pushed off from the tree and forced myself forward. My boots squelched in the damp earth, at least I was heading downhill. Downhill meant water. Water meant civilization. That's what the wilderness survival videos said, anyway, the ones I'd half-watched while procrastinating on my term paper.

The underbrush thinned ahead, opening into a clearing bathed in the golden light of late afternoon. Relief flooded through me. Clearings meant trails, or roads, or...

I stopped.

In the center of the clearing stood a stone marker, tall as my shoulder and carved with symbols I didn't recognize. They weren't Native American, or at least not like any I'd seen in my anthropology elective. These were older somehow, worn smooth by weather but still visible: spirals and crescents, slashes that might have been claws or warnings.

A boundary marker.

The thought came unbidden, certain. This was a line I wasn't supposed to cross.

I circled the stone slowly, pulling out my dead phone on instinct before remembering it was useless. The symbols seemed to shift in my peripheral vision, but when I looked directly at them, they were still. Just tricks of the light. Had to be.

On the far side of the clearing, the forest continued, but the trees were different. Darker. Their branches twisted at odd angles, reaching toward each other like gnarled fingers. The kind of forest from fairy tales, the ones where children got lost and never came home.

I should go back. Retrace my steps, find the trail, accept the lost points on the assignment.

But behind me, the woods I'd already passed through seemed to have grown denser, shadows pooling between the trees despite the afternoon sun. And ahead...

Ahead, I could hear water.

The sound was faint but unmistakable, a stream, maybe even a river. People built towns near water. I just needed to follow it downstream and I'd find help. My roommate Jess would be getting worried by now. She'd probably already called campus security, dramatic as she was.

The rational part of my brain, the part that had gotten me a 4.0 GPA and a scholarship to Portland State screamed at me to turn around. 

I stepped over the boundary.

Nothing happened. No lightning strike, no sudden fog, no ominous wolf howl like in the movies. Just the sound of my boots on moss-covered ground and that distant rush of water growing louder.

See? Just a rock. Just superstitious nonsense carved by bored hikers or historical professors or whatever.

I'd made it maybe fifty yards when the pain hit.

It started in my chest, a sharp twist like someone had reached between my ribs and squeezed. I gasped, stumbling against a tree trunk. My vision blurred at the edges. Was I having a heart attack? I was twenty-two and healthy, well, healthy enough. I didn't exercise much, but I wasn't about to drop dead in the woods from...

The pain shifted, sliding lower, coiling in my gut. Not a heart attack. Something else. Something that felt almost alive, burrowing deeper with each breath.

"No, no, no..." I sank to my knees, fingers digging into the damp earth. This was it. Some rare plant toxin I'd brushed against. Poisonous spores. A delayed reaction to that questionable cafeteria sushi from yesterday.

Through the haze of pain, I heard it: footsteps.

Relief and terror warred in my chest. Someone was here. Someone who could help. Or someone I should hide from. Did serial killers hang out in cursed forests? That seemed redundant.

"Help," I tried to call out, but it came out as barely a whisper.

The footsteps stopped.

I lifted my head, squinting through tears, and saw him.

He stood about twenty feet away, partially obscured by shadow despite the dappled sunlight. Tall, well over six feet, with broad shoulders and a stillness that reminded me of the forest itself. Dark hair fell past his collar, and even from this distance, I could see his eyes.

They were wrong.

Not the color, I couldn't make that out yet but the way they looked at me. Like I was a problem. A threat. Like I'd just done something unforgivable.

"Please," I managed, one hand pressed to my chest where the pain pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat. "I'm lost. I need—"

"You need to leave." His voice was low, rough, with an edge that made my survival instincts finally wake up and pay attention. "Now."

"I can't..." The pain spiked again and I doubled over, gasping. "Something's wrong. I think I'm sick."

He moved then, covering the distance between us in seconds, faster than anyone should move. Suddenly he was crouching in front of me, and I could see his face clearly.

Beautiful. The word came unbidden and completely inappropriate given that I was possibly dying. Sharp features, a jaw that could cut glass, lips pressed into a hard line. But it was his eyes that held me frozen: pale amber, almost gold, with an intensity that made me feel pinned like a butterfly to a board.

"What did you do?" The words came out harsh, almost a growl.

"N-nothing. I just crossed, there was a stone—"

His hand shot out and gripped my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. His fingers were warm, calloused, and the moment he touched me, the pain... changed.

It didn't stop. It transformed, spreading through my body like electricity, like fire, like nothing I'd ever felt. And underneath it, something else. Something that felt like recognition, like coming home, like...

"No." He released me so abruptly I fell backward into the dirt. He stood, taking several steps back, and the expression on his face was pure horror. "No. This isn't possible."

"What isn't possible?" I pushed myself up on shaky arms. The pain had faded to a dull throb, but that other sensation remained, a thread connecting my chest to his like an invisible cord. "What's happening to me?"

He didn't answer. He was staring at me like I'd just sentenced him to death.

"You need to leave," he said again, but this time his voice was different. Strained. Like the words cost him something. "Go back across the boundary. Forget you were ever here."

"I don't even know where here is!" Frustration cut through my fear. "I'm lost. My phone's dead. I've been wandering for hours and—"

"Not my problem."

He turned to leave.

And that's when it happened.

The invisible thread between us pulled taut. The pain roared back with a vengeance, dropping me to my hands and knees. But this time, I saw him stumble too. Saw his hand fly to his chest, saw the tension lock his shoulders.

He looked back at me, and the expression on his face was pure rage.

"What did you do?" he demanded again, but this time it wasn't a question. It was an accusation. A condemnation.

"I didn't do anything!" I gasped. "I don't know what's happening!"

He stalked back toward me, and every instinct I had screamed danger. This man was lethal. I could see it in the way he moved, in the barely restrained violence in every line of his body.

He crouched down again, and this time when he spoke, his voice was soft. Deadly soft.

"Listen very carefully, human. You've just made the worst mistake of your pathetically short life." His eyes flashed, literally flashed, the amber turning molten gold for just a second. "You've triggered a bond that should never have existed. And now, whether I want it or not, whether you want it or not, you're mine."

The words should have been romantic. Protective. Instead, they sounded like a death sentence.

"I'm not anyone's—"

"You don't get a choice." He stood again, and this time he didn't walk away. "And neither do I. Welcome to hell, little human. Try not to die before I figure out how to break this."

He turned and started walking deeper into the dark forest.

And despite every ounce of common sense I possessed, despite the fact that this man clearly wanted nothing to do with me, despite the very obvious danger radiating off him like heat,

I followed.

Because the alternative, going back the way I came felt like ripping myself in half.