Chapter 3

Hello old friend

Ronan’s pov

I startled and stumbled backwards, my blood ran cold.

It wasn’t dramatic. No grand slip, no heroic defiance. Just one misplaced step, heel catching air where the floor should have been, and suddenly I was down.

The impact rattled through my spine, sharp enough to steal my breath and ignore the distance.

For a heartbeat, I didn't move.

The wolf didn’t either. We stared at each other, unblinking.

My chest rose and fell too fast, the sound of it loud in my own ears. The wolf’s eyes burned red in the dark, steady and patient, as if time itself bent around it.

There was no snarl. No warning growl. Just that stare and still chaos.

Death had an aura, I realized. Not chasing.

Not frenzied but complete stillness .

The air pressed in on me, thick and suffocating, I think I'm having a panic attack.

My instincts screamed that I wasn’t alone. That the darkness beyond the windows was crowded. Watching. Waiting. I could feel it, a presence on all sides, like teeth closing in without ever touching me.

For the first time in years,I forgot what I was, who I was. Forgot the future I built off pain. Forgot that fear was supposed to belong to prey.

I only remember the moment when I had ever felt this type of helplessness and it ignited anger in me.

Minutes dragged by, or maybe seconds. Time warped. My mind raced endlessly , with plans of escape.

I guess there is nothing else to do but attack

I planted my hands against the floor and pushed myself upright.

I growled.

The sound tore out of me, raw and violent, filling the room and spilling into the night beyond. Power surged back into my limbs, my spine straightening as I faced it more intently.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice low and dangerous.

The wolf blinked.

Just once.

Its head tilted slightly, an almost curious motion, as if I had said something stupid. It didn’t answer.

Instead, its gaze slid past me, toward the darkness outside, toward whatever unseen audience lingered beyond the glass.

Then it stood.

Bones shifted. Flesh rippled. In a blink, I was no longer staring at a watcher but a challenger.

I let the change take me without hesitation, pain blooming and vanishing as fur tore through skin, as claws replaced hands, as the world sharpened into scent and sound and instinct.

And I lunged.

The wolf outside moved at the same time, but not in panic. It stretched, slow and deliberate, muscles rolling beneath its coat like it had all the time in the world. Then it sprang forward.

We collided in the sitting room.

The impact was brutal. Teeth snapped, claws scraped, bodies slammed together with a force that cracked against the furniture.

We rolled, growling and tearing, the night swallowing the sound of our fight as if it had been waiting for this all along.

I dug my teeth into it's arms and threw it as far away as i can, hoping to create space to get back on my feet but the space barely existed because it charged at me in seconds.

We hit the ground hard.

I barely had time to brace before its weight slammed into me, driving the air from my lungs.

The tiles cracked beneath us, glass and woods exploding around us. I twisted, snapping my jaws for its throat, but it was already moving.

Too fast.

Its claws tore into my side, raking deep into my ribs. Pain flared white-hot, sharp enough to make my vision stutter.

I snarled, snapping again, but it ducked low and surged forward, forcing me onto my back.

The world flipped for me

My forelimbs came down on my chest, pinning me. I felt the ground bite into my spine as its claws sank deeper, not slashing now, but hooking, anchoring its weight into my body.

Blood spilled freely, warm and slick, soaking into my fur and spreading around.

I roared and thrashed, muscles straining, but it didn’t budge.

It leaned in.

Its eyes burned inches from my face, cold and unyielding. There was nothing in them, just pure intent. The kind that promised this was calculated, deliberate, earned.

Until it wasn't just it, something sparked and its hold slackened, giving me the moment I needed.

I struck back.

My claws caught its side, tearing through fur and flesh. I felt it give beneath my grip, felt the heat of its blood spill over my paws.

It hissed, a sharp sound cutting through the night, but it didn’t retreat.

Instead, it pressed harder.

Its claws dug deeper into my chest, one sliding dangerously close to my heart.

My breath hitched, my strength faltering. My vision blurred at the edges, the world narrowing to pain and pressure and the unbearable certainty that I was losing.

Each ragged breath was a gamble, a shaky negotiation with the deadly proximity of that curved talon to the frantic drum of his heart.

This is it, then. This is how I end.

Then, a shift in the air.

Beneath the overwhelming iron-stench of my own blood, beneath the wild, musky odor of damp fur and forest loam… a different scent threaded through.

It was a whisper against a roar. Soft. Complex. The faint, ghostly memory of lavender soap undercut by something uniquely, essentially its—a warmth like sun on dry oak, a sharp, clean note of midnight ozone.

My fading mind, a detached observer, registered it first with bland confusion.

Feminine!

The thought was an anomaly in the chaos. I hadn’t thought of the beast as anything but “it,” a force of claws and fury. But this scent… it was a signature. A person.

And it was familiar.

The cold acceptance shattered. My eyes, which had begun to lose focus, snapped back with a new, desperate intensity.

They traveled from the monstrous paw pinning him, up the powerful, shaggy foreleg, across the heaving shoulders of the wolf. I took in its size—not the largest I had seen, but lithe, its form coiled with a predatory grace that now seemed… less haunting.

My gaze lifted, and met its eyes.

Not the mindless, feral red he expected. These were a stormy, intelligent red, wide with their own kind of horror, the pupils slitted thin in the moonlight. In them, the animal fury was fracturing, revealing a dawning, terrified recognition that mirrored my own.

The breath hitched in my torn chest, not from pain, but from shock. The scent filled my head, undeniable now, a key turning in a long-locked door.

I know this scent. I know the story told in those anxious, storm-cloud eyes.

Ignoring the blaze of warning from my wound, I moved. It was barely an inch, a painful tilt of my head, a desperate, shallow intake of air drawn not for survival, but for confirmation.

I buried my nose closer to the fur of the wrist from which the killing claw emerged. The scent bloomed, vivid and heartbreaking.

All the fight, all the fear, drained from me, replaced by a staggering, impossible truth.

The whisper that left my lips was barely a sound, more a shape formed by blood and awe, a secret exhaled into the space between monster and man.

"I know you."

It disregarded my words entirely, but there was an air of hesitation around her that was thick so I surged.

I bucked hard, twisted my body, using her brief hesitation against her.

Her claws tore free, my shoulder slamming into her chest as we rolled apart. I scrambled to my feet, blood dripping from my wounds, chest heaving.

She landed smoothly, already facing me, already composed.

The distance between us stretched thin and fragile.

We stared at each other again.

But this time, I wasn't looking at a stranger.

I was looking at a ghost that had teeth.