The first sign that something was wrong was not fear.
It was confusion.
I woke before dawn again, but this time the quiet felt different. Not peaceful. Not full. It was thinner, stretched too tight, like a sound pulled so far it was about to snap. My eyes opened to darkness still clinging to the forest, stars dim behind drifting cloud. The fire at the edge of camp burned low and steady, its embers pulsing faintly like a sleeping heart.
Jack and Beau were asleep on either side of me.
Their breathing was even. Their bodies were relaxed, loose in the way only true rest allowed. Nothing about them suggested danger. No tension in their limbs. No hitch in their breath. No instinctive readiness humming beneath their skin.
My wolf lifted her head inside me anyway.
Not alarmed.
Listening.
I
