The forest did not breathe.
The air pressed against my skin like a cold hand, heavy and deliberate, as though something ancient had reached through the soil to find me. The new pulse rumbled again, vibrating the ground beneath my boots. It was slower than the hybrid’s. Older. Deeper. As if the earth itself had remembered a heartbeat it had long forgotten.
Jax tightened his arms around me, his body held taut like a shield. “Sage. Do not move.”
Hazel backed away until she hit Zack’s shoulder. Her eyes were wide and glassy. “That voice. It was not the hybrid. It was not anything I have ever heard.”
Zack shifted, placing himself at Hazel’s side. His wolf instincts sharpened his posture, the tension in his back visible through his shirt. “How many things in this forest can speak like that?”
