The forest swallowed Emily whole.
She ran without direction, silver paws silent on the needle-strewn ground, the moon her only guide. Hours blurred into a rhythm of breath and heartbeat. The rejection still ached—a dull, persistent bruise over her heart—but the wild called louder now. Her wolf reveled in the freedom, in the power thrumming through newly awakened limbs.
She paused at a ridge overlooking a moonlit valley, ears pricked. The night was too quiet. No birds. No rustling small prey. Only the distant rush of a river and… something else.
Footfalls. Multiple. Deliberate.
Her hackles rose. She scented them before she saw them: pine and wild mint, sharp and fresh, laced with adrenaline. Whiskey and charcoal, smoky and warm. And beneath both, something darker—earth after rain, shado
