My pulse stuttered as I scanned through the trees.
Between the knotted trunks, a sliver of light beckoned—a clearing. Maybe safety. Maybe something else. The underbrush whispered as I pushed forward, twigs snapping like brittle bones underfoot. The deeper I went, the heavier the air became, thick with the musk of something wild, something hungry.
And then I felt it—the weight of eyes on my back.
Not human. There was something else in these woods.
My pace picked up as I rushed toward the clearing. I was too loud and clumsy.
It wasn't until I reached the light that I chided myself for imagining horrors that were non-existent. It was probably birds. My backpack landed with a dull thud on the soft ground as I groaned and stretched my back out.
After a few different stretches for my back and legs, I got to work setting up camp. I made sure to face my tent toward the area where I came from. There was no harm in being cautious.
By nightfall, the fire roared, painting my skin in flickering gold. My dinner was some instant pasta from a packet, but it tasted better when cooked over a fire. I’d always loved the scent of smoke, even as a kid in London’s smog-choked streets. My great-grandfather had traded East Africa’s wilderness for post-colonial labour, swapping baobabs for brick walls.
Sometimes I dreamt of lions roaring, though I’d never heard one outside a zoo. My grandmother swore it was the past whispering. Back in her village, she’d spin tales of creatures that weren’t quite lions—things with too many teeth, voices like broken drums, laughter that rolled like thunder.“The old ones,” she’d say,“walk in skins that don’t fit.” I’d chalked it up to a metaphor.
Now, in these woods, the memory curled around my ribs like the smoke from the fire.
Safer here, I told myself, poking the flames. Welsh woods don’t eat tourists.
But as the embers spat, a sound cut through the dark—
Not a howl.
A laugh?
Hungry.
And far, far too close.
My hand flew to the knife beside the fire, fingers tightening around the hilt.
Damn you, Liam.
I cursed my boyfriend for the hundredth time, his absence a fresh wound. He should’ve been here. Should’ve had my back.
But the anger burned quickly, swallowed by the ice flooding my veins.
Something moved in the trees. A shadow, low and liquid.
My breath hitched.
A snarl tore through the dark. Not mine. Not human.
But my lips peeled back anyway.
Come closer, something in me whispered.Let’s play.
My mind was playing tricks on me until my eye caught sight of the glaring full moon.
“You've got to be shitting me.”
The words barely left my lips before I was on my feet, knife glinting in the moonlight. Every survival instinct screamed at me to run, but some deeper, dumber part made me stand my ground until the thing stepped into the clearing.
Branches shattered like gunshots. I whirled, blade raised, and my breath turned to ice in my lungs.
Not a wolf. Not a man. Some grotesque fusion of both. It was seven feet of corded muscle, with claws that scraped the earth and a muzzle dripping saliva that sizzled where it hit the leaves. Its black eyes locked onto mine.
