Twelve: Lucian

The trail is sloppy—amateur, almost—but there’s no mistaking it. The snow is scored with tracks, prints deep and wide apart, each stride a lunge, not a trot. Branches hang low where something crashed through, shedding ice crystals in lazy, glittering sheets. The woods are loud with moonlight, every shadow edged in silver, and the wind combs the treetops like fingers through brittle hair.

We move in formation, the others fanned out and silent, all eyes on the ground or the horizon. The only sound is the distant hush of the river and the occasional snap of a twig when Erik, predictably, misses his step. I motion for a halt and crouch at the print in front of me. It’s bigger than it should be, but I recognize the gait—human struggling against a body gone wrong.

“Here,” I say, tracing a finger through the trampled powder. There’s blood, bright and sharp, spraying in a fine arc from the heel. A limp, then—classic for the first night. Tessa closes in, nostrils flaring.

“She’s hurt,” Tessa says, and for a split second, I see pity in the way she kneels. She masks it fast, glances to me for orders.

“She’s alive,” I say. “And moving fast.”

We press on. The woods swallow sound, and even the scouts have to work to keep pace. Every so often, I catch a flicker of movement at my periphery—animal, not human, a fox or a shadow. I let my senses open, taste the air for the iron tang of blood and the animal stench that means one of us. It’s stronger than before, and now there’s a top note I don’t expect: fear, sure, but something floral under it, something almost sweet.

My hands clench, involuntary. I should be immune to the newness of this—first shifts, panic, the way a human tries to fight the beast and always loses. I remember my own, the cold stone at my back and my father’s voice outside the cell, counting the seconds. He said it would be like drowning. He wasn’t wrong.

We pick up speed, the path winding tighter, the prints overlapping as if the runner started to double back, then thought better of it. Luka signals from the flank: a torn scrap of flannel caught on a branch. I take it, press it to my nose, and breathe deep. Sweat, mostly, and a note of whiskey—bar rot and regret, seeping out of the pores.

A low whistle—pack sign, not the wind. I freeze, hand up, and the team locks in behind me. The scout is ahead, barely visible against the trunk of a fallen pine, crouched and motionless. I ease forward, low to the ground, and join him at the edge of a shallow ravine.

The snow down there is a crime scene. Tufts of gray fur, spatters of blood, a groove where a body landed hard and skidded before clawing its way up the other side. The scout points. Halfway up the bank, the wolf must’ve tried to stand—two sets of tracks, human and animal, wrestling for dominance until the animal wins. It always does.

I stand and let the moon hit my face, breath fogging out in a cloud. The clearing reeks of confusion, panic, and—this time I’m certain—something that makes the hair at the base of my neck bristle. It’s not just animal. It’s not just prey. It’s like catching your own reflection in a window and seeing, for an instant, a stranger.

I shake it off. The law is the law. The animal doesn’t get a say.

“Scouts, take the high ground,” I whisper. “Betas, with me. We flush her to the river, cut her off before the bridge.”

They nod as one. Tessa gives me a long look, searching for anything in my face that isn’t command. She finds nothing, just the mask I’ve worn since I was old enough to bury the first body.

We descend into the ravine, boots sliding, the chill wetting my calves through the fabric. At the bottom, the tracks are fresher, blood darker and still wet on the ice. I touch it, smear it between thumb and finger. It’s hot—impossibly so—and I flinch from the contact.

“She’s disoriented,” I say, not bothering to whisper. “Running on instinct.”

Behind me, Luka and Tessa exchange a look. I hear it in the way their breath hitches—a silent question, maybe a judgment. I said she, not it. I shouldn’t have, but it’s out now.

We climb the other side, and the world opens up: a wide swath of forest sloping toward the valley, moonlight flooding every crease. The wind is at our backs, which means the wolf ahead can smell us coming. I test the air, searching for the next clue. It’s there, barely, a ribbon of scent dancing above the noise—close enough to taste, not close enough to see.

I glance up at the moon. It’s swollen, heavy, ready to drop. For a second, the idea creeps in that this is all a mistake—that there’s another way to handle the law, something my father never let himself consider. The thought disgusts me, and I shove it down.

I motion forward, and we move as one.

The hunt is all that matters. The rest is just noise.