SOMEONE'S WATCHING

Tyra's POV

My stomach turned to ice.

I stared at the five words for so long that they stopped looking like words at all, and for one stupid second, I actually waited for the punchline, for someone to jump out from behind the trees laughing at how easily the wolfless girl still scared.

But no one came, and the silence around me only grew heavier.

You shouldn't have come back.

I knew that kind of message. When I was fifteen, I used to find little notes like this everywhere, tucked into my textbooks, slipped under my bedroom door and stuffed into the pockets of the coats I left hanging in the hall, with words like defect, go home and nobody wants you here scrawled across them. I had never told anyone about them, because telling would only have made it worse, and I had learned very quickly that in this pack, the wolfless girl was always the problem.

Valentina, I thought immediately, and my jaw clenched.

It would be just like her to slip a note into my coat after I humiliated her in front of the windows. It would be childish and petty and exactly her style.

But even as I thought it, something about it felt wrong.

Valentina's notes had always smelled like her, expensive and sugary and cloying. This paper smelled of something else entirely. I lifted it closer to my nose without meaning to, and my brows drew together. It smelled of damp earth, and underneath that was something sharp and bitter and old, like dried herbs that had been left in a jar for far too long.

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

I looked around quickly, scanning the gardens behind me. They were completely empty, with the main house sitting far off in the distance, its windows glinting in the pale afternoon light. The group of teenagers was long gone.

Then my gaze drifted back toward the woods, and my heart stopped.

Something moved between the trees.

It was just a flicker, a shadow slipping from one dark trunk to another, so quick that I could have imagined it. But I didn't think I had.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice coming out sharper and louder than I intended.

Only the rustle of leaves answered me.

I stood up slowly, the note crumpling in my fist.

Every single instinct in my body was screaming at me to turn around and walk straight back to the house. I was a scientist, and I knew exactly how horror movies ended for the idiot who walked toward the strange noise in the woods.

Yet somehow, I couldn't make my feet move.

It was like something was pinning me in place, a strange, invisible pull coming from the shadows that made my skin prickle and my breath come shallow. The air around me felt thicker here, heavier, like the whole forest was holding its breath and waiting to see what I would do.

There was movement again, closer this time.

Then two eyes appeared in the darkness between the trees.

They were gleaming a faint, eerie gold, and they were far too high off the ground to belong to any normal animal. They didn't blink. They were simply fixed on me, steady and unwavering, like whatever they belonged to had been watching me for a very long time.

My breath caught in my throat.

At the same moment, my right hand throbbed once, hard, like a second heartbeat had suddenly pulsed right in the center of my palm.

I gasped and clutched my hand against my chest.

Then the eyes blinked out, and the shadows between the trees were empty again.

I didn't wait to see if they would come back.

I stumbled backward until my heels hit the stone path, then I turned and ran. I ran the way I hadn't run since I was a teenager, with my heart slamming against my ribs, my lungs burning and the crumpled note clutched so tightly in my fist that my nails bit into my palm. I didn't look back once, because I was too terrified of what I might see following me out of the trees.

I didn't slow down until I had burst through the garden doors and slammed them shut behind me.

The noise of the pack house rushed back over me like a wave, with voices echoing down the halls, footsteps hurrying back and forth and dishes clattering somewhere in the kitchens. They were such normal, ordinary sounds that I almost laughed with relief.

I leaned my back against the cool glass of the door, dragging air into my lungs and pressing a hand to my pounding chest.

But even with walls around me and people all over the house, I couldn't shake the feeling that something had followed me right to the edge of the light and was still standing out there, waiting.

With trembling fingers, I unfolded the paper one last time.

The letters looked darker now than they had in the garden, almost black, thick and slightly raised on the paper, like they hadn't been written in ink at all.

You shouldn't have come back.

My fingers shook so badly that the paper rattled.

I should tell someone. I knew that I should. I should march straight to Lucius's study and show him the note and tell him about the eyes in the woods.

But then what?

I could already picture it, with my mother's worried face, Lucius's grim one and the twins hovering over me like I was made of glass. Even worse, I could imagine the whispers if anyone found out, about how the wolfless girl had been back for barely a day and was already causing trouble and seeing monsters in the trees.

I had spent ten years making sure nobody ever had to protect me again.

I folded the note back into its neat little square and shoved it deep into my pocket. In my other pocket, my phone buzzed softly, and I knew without looking that it was Magnus, still waiting for a reply I no longer knew how to write. How was I supposed to tell the one person who thought I was the most rational woman he knew that I was seeing glowing eyes in the woods and hearing voices through glass? Then I pushed myself off the door and headed for the stairs, determined to lock myself in my room until my hands stopped shaking.

I didn't notice the faint, bitter scent of old herbs still clinging to my fingers.

The family wing was quieter than the rest of the house. As I passed Lucius's study, I noticed the heavy oak door was standing slightly ajar, and the low murmur of voices drifted out into the hallway. I kept my head down and my steps quick, but just as I passed the gap in the door, the voices inside suddenly stopped.

"Do you smell that?" Alaric's deep voice asked sharply.

I froze mid-step, my heart lurching.

"Yeah," Osric replied slowly, sounding uneasy. "I've smelled that before, but I can't seem to pinpoint where."

"Three months ago," Alaric said, his voice tense and low. "When we went to investigate that dead rogue just outside the pack borders. It was all over the body."

"Why on earth would we be smelling it inside the pack house?" Lucius asked, his voice hardening with concern.

My hand slowly curled around the note in my pocket.

I didn't wait to hear any more. I walked the rest of the way to my room as quietly as I could, my pulse roaring in my ears, and I had almost reached my door when Alaric spoke again. 

"It’s almost as if something's watching us," he said, his voice carrying all the way down the hall, so cold that it froze me all over again.