"Yeah. It is."
We moved on.
More tracks, crisscrossing the terrain in patterns that spoke of restlessness. He paced, I realized. Covered the same ground over and over, wearing paths into the snow that the weather kept erasing.
A kill site—the scattered remains of something larger, torn apart with more violence than hunger required. Blood stained the snow in a wide radius, frozen now, preserved by the cold. Whatever he'd caught, he'd destroyed.
"He's getting worse," I said, studying a section of tracks where the pattern had become erratic—loops and spirals, doubling back on itself.
"How can you tell?"
"The pacing. The overkill on the hunts." I pointed to the chaotic tracks. "This is a wolf that can't settle. Can't rest. He's running from something he can't escape."
"Himself."
"Yeah." I straightened, scanning the slope ahead. "The longer a shifter stays feral, the worse it gets. The wolf mind isn't designed to exist alone. It needs pack, needs connection, needs something outside itself to anchor to. Without that, it just... spirals."
James absorbed this in silence. Through the bond, I felt him processing—the horror settling into understanding.
"How long?" he asked. "How long has he been like this?"
"Years."
"Alone."
"Completely alone."
James was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was rough.
"That could have been me."
"I know."
"If you hadn't been there. If I'd shifted alone, with no one to talk me back..." He shook his head. "I'd be like him. Making dens and pacing circles and forgetting I was ever anything else."
"But you weren't alone." I reached for his hand, and he gripped it tight. "And neither is he. Not anymore."
The vision hit without warning.
One moment I was climbing, focused on the route, mind occupied with terrain assessment. The next, the world tilted and went white.
Snow. Wind. A ridge carved against the sky like a blade.
A wolf—pale fur, lighter than James's, matted and scarred—stood at the edge of a precipice. Not running. Not hunting. Just standing. Staring out at nothing.
Yellow eyes, wild and empty. No recognition. No awareness. Just the hollow gaze of something that had forgotten what it was looking for.
And then—
A flicker. So brief I almost missed it. Something beneath the wild, behind the emptiness. A spark that might have been pain. Might have been memory.
Might have been nothing at all.
"Lumi!"
I came back to myself with James's hands on my shoulders, his face inches from mine. We were on the ground—I'd fallen without realizing, my knees hitting rock hard enough to bruise through my layers.
"I'm okay." The words came out hoarse. "Vision. I had a vision."
