And worse, she’sexactly the type of woman my wolf remembers.
Soft in shape but not in spirit. Guarded, but not cold. She walks with her chin tilted up like she knows how the world works but hasn’t given up on the possibility that something good might still be hiding in its corners.
And the wolf inside me notices.
Not in the way it usually notices prey or threat or territory. It notices her like it did once before, long ago.
Before the night I buried her. Before Isolde chose death over the bond we shared. Before I learned that even love can be fatal.
I close my eyes again and this time Iseeher.
Isolde, with her laughter like sunlight on steel, the way she touched my jaw when the nightmares came. The way she said my name as if it didn’t belong to a monster.
The look in her eyes when she realized she was afraid of me.
Not the beast.
Me.
I open my eyes with a growl that reverberates through the glass. The window doesn’t shatter. It should.
Her scent is in the house now.
She hasn’t even crossed into my wing—she wouldn’t dare, not yet—but it moves ahead of her, curling into the vents, clinging to the velvet drapes like a memory that hasn’t even been made.
It calms the beast.
Andthatis what terrifies me most. Because I’ve only ever known one other thing that could do that, and she died calling me by name.
3
TESSA
It’s the quiet that gets to me.
Not the cold, not the isolation, not even the eerie grandeur of the Crane estate with its endless halls and glowering portraits—it’s the silence that settles over everything like snow that never melts. The kind that seeps into your bones, your breath, your thoughts, and makes everything sound too loud—your heartbeat, your footsteps, even the brush of fabric as you move through a room.
I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and already I’m starting to feel like a ghost in someone else’s story.
Mary hasn’t spoken to me since last night. No check-in. No orientation. Just a typed schedule slid under my door before dawn like it was too dangerous to knock. The paper’s stiff and yellowed, like it’s been copied from some long-forgotten binder kept in a drawer no one dares open.
It reads more like a list of commandments than a nursing plan:
All patient interactions occur before sundown.
Never touch the patient unless instructed.
Do not enter the west wing.
