005

Elara

My heart pounded against my ribs, fast and hard, fear driving every step. I'd counted five hallways now, moving on instinct more than any real sense of direction, when I finally ditched the bundle of towels I'd been carrying and cut toward the far wing. No maids or guards. The empty silence should have felt like relief. Instead it prickled at the back of my neck, wrong in a way I couldn't name — too quiet, the kind of quiet that felt held rather than natural, like the whole wing was waiting on something.

I kept close to the windows, scanning for anything that might be an exit — a courtyard, a low wall, anything. Moonlight spilled across the floor in long silver bars, laying stripes of light and shadow over the stone that made every doorway ahead look darker than it probably was.

Then I heard it.

A growl, low and rough, out of nowhere. It rolled through the corridor like something I felt in my ribs before I fully registered it as sound. I froze mid-step, glancing around for the source and finding nothing. I told myself it was nothing and kept moving.

It came again. Louder this time, and unmistakable — a sound thick with pain, ragged at the edges, the kind that made my stomach twist just hearing it. Against every instinct telling me to keep walking, I turned toward it instead.

A heavy wooden door stood at the end of the hall, the grain dark with age, iron studs along its face gone dull under a layer of dust. I pressed my hand flat against the wood and leaned in, ears straining for whatever was happening on the other side. The wood was cool under my palm, and faintly, beneath my fingertips, I could feel the door itself shudder with each sound from within. A crack ran along the frame, thin but wide enough to see through if I angled myself right.

I shouldn't be here. I don't have time to waste. But one look wouldn't hurt. Just one.

I squinted through the gap.

A wolf filled the room beyond — larger than anything I'd ever seen back home, its coat black and thick, catching the moonlight in a way that made it look almost liquid, threads of silver rippling along its spine with every strained movement. The smell reached me even through the narrow gap, musk and hot fur, and under that, the unmistakable copper tang of blood. Its flesh looked torn in places, raw and glistening, and it groaned in pain as its claws tore at the floor and walls, straining against the chains anchoring it in place, each link scraping stone in time with its ragged, heaving breaths.

Then it hit me. A pull, sharp and sudden, deep in my chest — painful enough that I winced and pressed a hand to my sternum without meaning to, my own heartbeat suddenly loud and uneven in my ears.

The wolf's head snapped toward the door.

Gold eyes locked on mine through the gap, and understanding crashed over me all at once, cold as plunging into water.

What have I done.

I didn't wait to find out what came next. I ran, and I was three strides into the first hallway when I heard the door behind me splinter apart — a crack of wood and iron that echoed down the corridor like thunder, loud enough that I felt it in my teeth.

"No, no, no." The words tumbled out of me in a whisper, half plea, half prayer, breath tearing ragged in my throat. Moon Goddess, let me survive this once, and I swear I'll never sneak around where I don't belong again. My legs burned, my lungs burned, everything burned, each breath scraping in too fast to be useful, and I was fairly certain I was going to die from the running alone before the wolf even reached me.

I hit a corner and dropped low, pressing myself into the shadow of it, willing my breath quiet even as my pulse roared loud enough to drown out thought. The wolf tore past a heartbeat later, close enough that the wind of it stirred my hair and carried that same thick, musky heat across my skin, fast enough that I understood with total clarity I had no chance of outrunning it in a straight line. I clapped both hands over my mouth to keep even the sound of my breathing contained, palms damp and trembling against my lips.

I gave it a few minutes. Long, agonizing minutes, my back pressed to the wall, the stone leaching cold through the thin fabric of my dress, my pulse hammering loud enough I was certain it would give me away on its own. When I finally dared to check the hallway again and made a break for it, the wolf was already there.

Waiting. At the far entrance, exactly where I needed to go.

It growled low in its throat and started toward me, slow, deliberate, in absolutely no hurry — each padded step landing with a soft, unhurried weight that terrified me more than a charge would have. Tears blurred my vision, hot and stinging. My whole life crowded into that one narrow hallway, every regret and every unfinished thing rising up at once, and I turned and ran again because there was nothing else left to do.

There was no version of this where I outran a wolf on human legs. I knew that. I ran anyway, glancing back when I couldn't hear it behind me anymore — and that single distracted glance was all it took.

I collided with something solid enough to knock the air from my lungs, the impact jarring through my whole body. Before I could fall, an arm wrapped around my waist and hauled me upright, pulling me flush against a chest that didn't belong to anything I'd been running from a second ago — bare, warm, his heartbeat steady against my shoulder where mine was frantic and uneven.

I looked up into gold eyes. The same gold eyes as the wolf's.

The same person.

I fought against the arm holding me, twisting, pulling, every instinct screaming to get free — but his grip didn't so much as loosen. Solid. Unshakable. Like I weighed nothing at all against whatever strength he was holding back. His skin carried the same musk from the room beyond the door, mixed now with something warmer, something that made the pull in my chest ache instead of frighten, and I hated how confusing that was.

"Where do you think you're going?" he whispered against my ear, his voice dropped low, threaded through with a growl that vibrated somewhere deep in my chest, his breath warm against my skin.