I forced a smile. “I’ll be careful.”
“I know you will.” He brushed a kiss to the top of my head as if I were still twelve and not a grown woman who could shift into a lynx and climb a cliff faster than he could blink. “I’ll check on you later.”
He headed down the hallway, and I stood there for a moment, breathing through the familiar mix of affection and restlessness that always followed our conversations. He tried so hard to protect what was left of our family that he didn’t see how small my world had become.
But I did, and the walls pressed a little closer every day.
Which is why I slipped through the back door a few minutes later, heading for the trees and the only place I ever truly felt free. The mountain was quiet, and I moved with practiced ease through places no one else bothered to watch anymore. They assumed I’d stopped trying to explore on my own.
They were wrong.
By the time I reached the forest’s edge, my heartbeat raced in anticipation instead of irritation. The trees towered over me, but they didn’t press in the way my chain members sometimes did.
Tugging my dress over my head and hanging it from a nearby branch, I shifted without hesitation, my bones softening and fur rippling along my skin. The world around me sharpened while my lynx stretched, shook out her limbs, and took off across the ridge in a fluid burst of motion.
The earth gave beneath my paws in a familiar rhythm, the wind catching my whiskers as I leaped over a fallen log. This mountain was a maze only members of the Nightbriar Chain knew well, each cliff and ledge part of a memory older than any of us.
I wasn’t supposed to run alone. Or go this far.
There was a long list of things my brother didn’t approve of me doing.
But out here, no one hovered.
I slowed near a clearing where the trees opened just enough for sunlight to reach the moss-covered ground. Placing one paw on the ground, I paused to drag a faint scent on the wind into my lungs.
Something brushed at the edge of my awareness. It was a faint tug, different from anything I’d experienced before.
My lynx lifted her head, her ears pricked. The forest didn’t feel dangerous, but something had changed. There was an odd sense of rightness in the air.
I took another cautious step, my tail going still. The pull grew stronger, like a thread winding itself around my spine. It wasn’t a warning, and my deeper intuition leaned toward it instead of away. That only made me more curious.
I moved toward the tree line, my paws silent on the ground. Every stride made the tug sharper, as though I were drawing nearer to the source of a truth I’d been waiting for without knowing it.
What waited on the other end wasn’t what I ever expected. A shape stood between the trees. Large and still, blue eyes staring at me.
I froze, my gaze locked on the wolf. A shifter who was not part of our territory.
My breath caught even though I wasn’t in human form.
He didn’t advance, simply standing there as if he’d been expecting me. Something inside my chest lurched. Recognition, instant and absolute.
My lynx leaned forward; the pull toward the wolf was so strong that I felt unsteady on my paws. The force of it stunned me.
My thoughts scattered, instinct blazing in their place. The world narrowed to those eyes—steady, sure, and impossibly familiar.
I wasn’t prepared for this. No one had even hinted this was how fate felt.
The wolf had no place in our territory, but that didn’t stop the connection between us from locking in place with a devastating certainty.
He took one slow step out of the shadows, and sunlight caught the edges of his fur. My heart hammered against my ribs, the echo too loud in my ears.
Everything inside me whispered one impossible truth.
My mate.
2
BOOKER
