Chapter Six

Loria’s POV

I didn’t say goodbye. Not to the road behind me. Not to the pale blue house with peeling trim. Not to the bedroom window that still glowed faintly behind drawn curtains.

I just crossed the threshold.

Past the backyard fence, past the drainage ditch lined with cattails and crushed soda cans. Past the final streetlamp of Meadowridge Lane. It sputtered weakly as I walked away, like it, too, was giving up.

Then the trees took me.

They rose up like sentries at the edge of suburbia—tall, indifferent, and quiet. Not the curated kind of quiet that lives in cul-de-sacs and manicured lawns, but the deeper hush of the natural world. The leaves rustled with secrets. Something scurried through the underbrush nearby.

I followed the narrow path carved by deer and time. Each footfall pressed into earth that didn’t care who I was or what I’d done. The sky above melted from soft gray to lavender, then dimmed into deepening blue.

My thoughts looped over and over: Andy’s voice, trembling and urgent. The slap of my mother’s palm. The weight of the duffle bag bouncing against my side.

Zerina was there, but distant—watching from the recesses of my mind, a shadow at the edge of thought. She said nothing. Just let me move. Let me breathe.

And step by step, as the hum of cars faded behind me and the last threads of civilization unraveled, something inside me began to loosen. I didn’t feel safe, exactly. But I didn’t feel like I was suffocating anymore either.

Golden light filtered through the trees, catching on the moss, flickering like a final blessing before night. I paused at a bend in the river, where the water curved slow and wide. Ferns bent toward the banks, and the sound of rushing softened into a steady hush.

There was a weight in my chest—not fear, but pressure. A deep, ancient ache. My bones hummed with it. My breath came faster.

“Now,” Zerina murmured.

I knelt, fingers curling into the loam. My whole body felt electric—alive in a way that edged toward unbearable. And then it began.

The shift came not like pain, but like release.

Muscles stretched, twisted. Bones slid against themselves, cracking and knitting into new forms. My skin rippled, reshaped. The forest spun around me, and I surrendered to the momentum.

My mind didn’t fragment. It expanded. Opened.

And when the change was complete, Zerina stood in my place.

The wolf stepped to the riverbank, paws silent on the damp earth. Moonlight bathed her in silver as she leaned forward, drawn to the mirror of the water.

I watched from within, breath caught.

She was stunning. A creature of story and myth.

Her fur shimmered gold—not yellow or tan, but true gold—like melted coin, like sunlight trapped in hair. A streak of white slashed over her left eye, sharp as a scar. The right ear bore a stripe so black it nearly disappeared in the shadows.

And her eyes—bright, searing gold—burned like lanterns in the night.

Too much to be real. Too beautiful to be safe. A goddess. A monster. A miracle.

Zerina threw back her head and howled. The sound echoed like a prayer and a warning. I felt it in my ribs. In my teeth.

For the first time since I ran, I didn’t feel like a runaway or a victim.

I felt powerful.

I felt not alone.

We ran.

Through fern and fog and moonlight. Through tangled roots and startled birds. Across rocks slick with mist and through reeds that brushed our flanks.

The wind screamed with us. The stars blinked high above, uncaring but present.

Time vanished.

There was no more before or after. Only this: the slam of paws against dirt, the exhale of breath in the cold, the thunder of a body finally unchained.

Zerina leapt over a fallen log, and I laughed inside—wild, bright, a sound that matched the rhythm of the trees flying past.

The river stayed at our side like a silver guide. The world behind melted into memory. Sometime past three, Zerina slowed. The forest whispered around us, leaves swaying like lullabies.

She shifted again, slower this time. The pain was bearable, expected. The form I returned to was smaller, softer, more fragile—but no less real.

I gasped as my knees hit the cold earth. My hands shook as I pulled a t-shirt and leggings from my bag along with socks and my jacket. The tarp I had packed last minute sat beside the bag, and I strung it between two low branches with rope.

I gathered pine needles, patted them into a rough bed. Pulled the jacket around my shoulders and sank into it.

Granola tasted like sand in my mouth, but I forced down two bars. The third slipped from my fingers as my body gave out, dragging me into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

We had been walking for hours—silent but alert, the forest slowly lightening with the coming dawn. Pale mist clung to the ground, winding between roots and hanging low over the undergrowth like a veil.

Then Zerina stopped.

No warning, no signal—just a sudden halt. One paw raised, frozen mid-step.

I felt it too—something inside her spine gone taut.

“What is it?” I asked.

Zerina didn’t answer right away. Her nose twitched, head turning slightly to the left.

“There’s something…” she murmured, voice hushed and sharp. “A scent. Not deer. Not fox. Not human.”

I leaned into her awareness, sensing it now—a faint thread in the air, subtle but distinct. Not unpleasant, but unfamiliar.

Curious. Wild. Almost... wrong.

She crouched low, every movement controlled, and padded forward, following the invisible trail.

The forest seemed to hush around us. Even the birds fell silent.

We followed the scent for what felt like miles, winding deeper through narrow paths and between black-lichened trees. The river moved alongside again, slower here, wide and almost still.

Then—nothing.

The scent vanished.

Just... gone.

Zerina circled, sniffing the damp ground, the air, the rocks. She dipped her nose to the riverbank and drew in a long breath.

Still nothing. The scent had ended here—abrupt and clean, as if it had never existed at all.

“It didn’t cross the river?” I asked, tense.

“No. It just stopped. Like it dissolved.” Zerina’s tail flicked. Her ears were high, alert.

We waited. Minutes passed.

The river burbled softly. Mist rolled lazily across the surface, hiding what lay beneath.

Zerina took a cautious step forward and sniffed again—but the trail was truly gone.

She let out a low growl, frustrated.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

Neither did I.

It felt like a message, but one we couldn’t read. Like someone had been there just long enough to be noticed—and then vanished on purpose.

“Do we stay?”

Zerina backed away from the water slowly, muscles coiled.

“No. If it wants to be followed, it’ll leave a path. If it doesn’t... we won’t find it now.”

We turned away, leaving the empty bank behind. The air felt colder. The silence stretched longer.

And somewhere, far downstream, something watched the ripples fade.

The mountain air grew thinner as we climbed, cutting into our lungs with every breath. Pine needles gave way to rock; the soil beneath Zerina’s paws turned brittle and dry. Every sound echoed longer up here. A snapped twig sounded like thunder. The flap of wings overhead sent shadows scattering like ghosts.

Then she caught it.

That scent again.

Faint, almost like it was trying to hide. But unmistakable.

Zerina stopped on a narrow ledge, her nose lifting into the cold air. The scent curled in her sinuses—familiar, wrong, threaded with something sour and sweet like blood rotting beneath pine. Her hackles rose.

She didn’t hesitate. I didn’t protest.

We ran.

The trail wasn’t clean. It weaved erratically—like whatever left it had doubled back, then veered off with no pattern. But Zerina stayed on it, driving deeper into the trees until the path dipped unexpectedly into a hollow between two rising cliffs.

Smoke.

The scent hit us fast—wood smoke, heavy and oily. Zerina slowed as a break in the trees revealed flickering orange light ahead.

A camp.

She crept closer, belly low, breath caught.

No pack-bond. No alpha's mark. No territory claim.

What we smelled was old blood and recent sweat, piss-soaked furs, fear buried under smoke.

There were at least six of them that I could see. Men, mostly—rough around the edges, their clothing torn, some of them shirtless despite the mountain chill. One had a half-healed gash running down his side, pink and angry in the firelight. Another sharpened a blade that didn’t look ceremonial—it looked used.

Zerina froze in the shadows, watching.

They were werewolves, yes. But not the kind I’d grown up hearing about. Not protectors. Not pack.

These were rogues.

Not just loners—feral ones. The kind who took what they wanted and didn’t leave witnesses behind.

And they weren’t alone.

In the back of the camp, lashed to a tree, a girl—maybe eighteen—was bound by her wrists, barely conscious. Her clothes were torn. Her eyes swollen shut.

I surged forward in Zerina’s mind, horror crashing into fury.

“We have to help her.”

Zerina didn’t answer. She was still watching, calculating, breathing in every thread of the situation. Fighting here meant death. Getting caught meant worse.

“Zerina—” I growled.

“I see,” she said at last.

We stepped back slowly. One paw, then another.

But the breeze shifted.

One of the men lifted his head, nostrils flaring. His face twisted, lips peeling back into a grin.

“We got company.”

Zerina didn’t wait.

We turned and ran—faster than we’d ever moved before. The forest blurred past. Behind us, shouts. Then snarls. Then the sound of at least two others giving chase.

We didn’t try to lose them at first. Not yet. The goal was distance.

Only when we hit a steep slope thick with underbrush did Zerina angle left, ducking into a narrow deer trail and vanishing beneath a tangle of fallen trees. We doubled back. Circled. Waited.

Breath held.

Silence.

No one followed. No scent tracked.

We’d gotten out.

We weren’t harmed—but the danger was real now. No longer just a feeling.

This mountain held monsters.

And we had just looked one in the eyes.

We didn’t stop running until the wind tore at our sides and the shadows thinned with morning light. Finally, Zerina slowed, panting hard. I felt the weight of her exhaustion like it was my own.

We found a dry ridge beneath a crooked cedar and collapsed there—her body melting back into mine with a shudder that left my fingers twitching in the dirt.

I pulled the tarp from my pack, hands shaking, and draped it over us. My knees were scraped. My hair smelled like smoke and sweat. My throat burned with unscreamed rage.

That girl—they’d left her there. Tied up. Broken.

I stared into the trees as if I could burn a hole through the forest back to that camp.

I wanted to go back.

I wanted to tear them apart.

But even now, curled under cheap nylon with the early sun touching my skin, I knew I wasn’t strong enough yet.

Not yet.

I pulled my jacket tighter and closed my eyes, the girl’s swollen face burned behind my lids.

We would come back.

Not as prey.

As reckoning.