ログインI follow her gaze instinctively, my body tensing as I scan the forest around us.but there's nothing around us. There's no movement and no sound. There's nothing I can see, but when I look back down at her, she’s still watching, her gaze focused somewhere just beyond the edge of what I can perceive. A chill slips down my spine as I look at her. I tell myself it’s my imagination. It has to be. I’ve been through too much in too little time. My body is probably drained, my mind stretched thin, and my magic is unstable. Of course things would feel off. Of course I’d start noticing things that aren’t really there. But there's the fact that something in me tells me my baby isn't just looking at nothing. I can feel the thing she's looking at. It starts as a faint pulse beneath my skin, a soft hum of energy that doesn’t quite belong to me. My magic has always been something I feel clearly, something I can identify and control, but this pulse is different It’s… responding not to me, or
I start moving and I don’t stop even when my body threatens to force me to. The forest stretches endlessly around me, unfamiliar and unwelcoming, but I push forward anyway, one shaky step after another, with my daughter held tightly against my chest. Every muscle in my body aches. Every breath I let out from my chest burns my lungs, yet I don’t allow myself to slow down. Not yet. The memory of phantom explosions and ghostly screams still echoes too clearly in my mind. The fear that the witch hunters will be back makes a chill spread down my spine, and this time knowing that the masked stranger isn't here, it makes me feel weak and powerless for a second. I don't know when I started relying on him so much, but I have. I never believed I would be able to take on the witch hunters by myself, and while he was here, I didn't have to. Now that he's gone, there's only a crippling fear in my heart that I won't survive the next second. Still, I push it all down and continue walking. Onl
There’s no hesitation in his voice. No evasion. He just sounds honest about all this and that unsettles me more than anything else he’s said tonight. I stare at him, searching his face, trying to make sense of him, trying to understand why everything about him feels like something I should recognize. “You’re lying,” I say quietly, "You won't leave me here." “I’m not.” He says. Forcing myself to be calm, I ask the one question that might get me some insight into who I'm dealing with, "Then how do you know how to fight the witch hunters like that? How do you know where to go, how to evade them?" His gaze sharpens, just a fraction but I can tell he will respond to this question. “I know how to do all this because I’ve seen them before.” My breath catches softly in my chest and the weight of those words settles between us immediately. I ask softly, “You’ve fought the witch hunters before?” He nods, “Yes.” “And you just… didn’t think to mention that earlier?” There’s a flicker
I don’t like this.The quiet of these woods presses in too closely, wrapping around me like something alive, like something is watching. It isn’t the peaceful silence of a forest at rest.This feels too deliberate, like even the wind has been told to hold its breath.The trees don’t sway here. The leaves don’t rustle and there's no sound of life in the underbrush.Everything in me that is werewolf tells me that I don't belong here. Even the air feels heavier in my lungs, thick with something I can’t quite name.I wouldn't be so bothered about it if something else wasn't also happening at the same time.There’s him.... walking away.The masked stranger I met six months ago, who rescued me and my baby from a band of murderous witch hunters, Is turning around and walking away.My chest tightens at the sight of his back retreating into the shadows without any words. He's leaving like he was never meant to stay, like this, him saving me, carrying me, standing between me and death, was nothing more
My lips thin into a tight line and I want to scream at him, ask him why my baby isn't crying like any other new born child would... But I know I can't. I can still feel the witch hunters following us, and anything that keeps my baby quiet without killing her isn't something for me to make a fuss about.I look down at her again, and her silence unsettles me more than anything else tonight.We keep moving and her glow softens until all I can see is her skin cradled into mine again.The forest grows thicker the deeper we go. At some point my magic flows through the ground again. It leaves me in a rush and assesses the forests around us.I hope against hope that I'll get a different feedback, that my magic will tell me something else this time, but the response is the same.The Witch hunters are still coming. And they're even closer now. I can feel them in the back of my mind.It's like opening a garbage can and the sensation is revolting. Their magic doesn’t blend with the world. It tears thro
We don’t stop moving.For a while my eyes are fixed on the witch hunter's body, the way it lies there on the floor still and unmoving. I can't see any blood, but my senses can smell something that's gone bad, something that's gone rotten wafting off him. I half want to reach out and touch him, but I don't need to be told that would be a bad idea.He's dead, but how dead is he?The masked stranger doesn’t even look back at the dead body he's left on the ground. His attention is already elsewhere, on the forests and on the air. His attention is on the things I can’t see but can feel creeping closer.He can feel them too, maybe even better than I can.“They're spreading out,” he says quietly.I swallow hard, tightening my hold on my daughter. “You can see them?”“I can hear them.”That doesn’t make me feel a lot better, mostly because I can't. Before I can ask anything else, he reaches for me again and this time, I don’t step back.I should. Every instinct I have screams that I should but I don’t
Tracy's POV.I should have slit Destiny's throat when I had the chance."You're definitely not some random rogue assassin so why not stop being such a coward and let me see your face if you know you really want to kill me."The moment where she dared me to show my face plays over and over again in
The face in front of me flickers.It shifts.I recognize the blue eyes as Tracy's but I also see the way the curve of her lips resembles someone else's. The locks of hair melt between black and brown and for a moment, I can't understand what I'm seeing.It fries my brain.I'm seeing Tracy, but her
Tristan doesn't leave immediately even when I go into the room and lock the door behind me.I know it because for a while there are no footsteps. For a while, I can hear him breathing on the other side of the door.Again, I wish that didn't grate against my nerves as much as it did, but it seems th
Smoke from the fires burns the back of my throat.Karl's body lies on the funeral pyre, unlit but swathed in the traditional burial fabric of the Silvercrest pack. The moon is high in the sky and the pack's crest is hand stitched onto every surface of the cloth, gleaming in outlines of gold and sil







