Name

The man's breathing was shallow yet steady, each rise and fall of his chest both fragile and inexorable, like the tide dragged by some unseen moon. His red eye, wild and alien fastened upon me with such intensity that it felt as though the walls themselves fell away. The hiss of the IV drip in the corner was a small, clinical noise, but against the weight of his gaze, it sounded indecently mundane.

I swallowed hard. The clinic suddenly felt too small, the air too thick. Antiseptic and candle wax mingled with another scent-richer, metallic, alive. His scent. It clung to the room, to my skin.

"You should have let the beast die," he repeated, breaking the silence when I did not give an answer.

His hands fell to his side, his large body sinking into the blankets. "Fear will better serve you mortal."

The words rolled out like low thunder-measured, deliberate, carrying not rage but something far heavier. Not regret. Not quite grief.

My breath caught. I gripped the counter behind me as though it might anchor me. "I told you," I whispered, though my voice trembled with the weight of his presence. "That isn't what I do. You were bleeding out-I had no choice."

His lips curved, not in warmth but in something darker-an expression carved from sorrow and endless battle. It lent his face, already sculpted in impossible perfection, the look of a fallen angel who had long ago been tired of paradise.

"You do not yet understand, healer." His voice deepened, gravel and smoke woven through a resonance that made the very air hum. "Every stitch you placed in me has bound you closer to my fate. Already, the shadows know your scent."

A cold shiver rippled up my arms, raising gooseflesh. "Shadows?" I managed, my voice barely audible while my hand soothed Chicken Nuggets fur. "What shadows?"

His eyes closed briefly, lashes dark against skin pale and fevered. The gesture should have made him look human, fragile. Instead, it made him look like a king resting between long battles.

"There are hunters who crave what I am," he said, the words laced with weariness but also command. "They will not hesitate to strike at what shelters me. You have taken me in, and that alone has painted their mark upon you."

My heart gave a painful lurch. "Hunters?" I whispered. "What do you mean? Are they people? Humans like me?" I asked already having reached the conclusion of the difference between him and me.

His eyes snapped open, and once more the crimson within them flared. My knees weakened beneath that molten fire.

"Not men," he said, each syllable drawn like a blade. "Not as you understand them." He said and I wondered if he was habituated to having to explain things to another.

"Some were once mortal. Some were never human at all. All are driven by hunger, by the lust of power. And they hunt what they cannot possess."

So they hunt you, I thought as I unconsciously took a step back until the counter pressed into my spine. "Why?"

He tilted his head, a motion smooth and wolfish, as though the beast within him had never truly left. His damp hair fell across his brow, shadowing one crimson eye, but even concealed, his beauty was a thing to unmake the world.

"Because I am a curse," he said softly through lips that looked carved for both cruelty and tenderness. He seemed too much: too regal, too dangerous, too unearthly for this small, lamplit room.

"And those who hunt curses care little for what else burns in their wake."

My lips parted, but no words came. My rational mind clawed for explanations-delirium, madness, hallucination-but reason had already crumbled the moment I had seen his body shatter, reshape, and rise as something both wolf and man.

So many questions I needed answers for, but instead I asked.

"What's your name?" The question slipped from me before I could think, quiet but insistent, a tether I desperately needed. For a moment, silence stretched, taut as a bowstring. His eyes narrowed, sharp with hesitation, and then softened as though relenting to some unspoken law.

"Zevrael,"

He said, his voice a low chord, the name itself resonant, carrying weight like an oath.