My human. The possessive phrasing should have bothered me, should have made me bristle with protective instincts that had nothing to do with pack hierarchy.
Instead, it just made me realize how much I wanted it to be true.
“What if I can't?” I asked, hating how young my voice sounded in the quiet room. “What if he can't forgive this?”
Dad was quiet for a long moment, studying my face.
“Then you'll learn to live with the consequences of your choices,” he said finally. “But you'll do it as an Alpha, not as a boy who's afraid to fight for what matters to him.”
20
FOREST WHISPERS
NATE
The forest breathed around me, pine needles rustling overhead in a rhythm that felt almost like conversation. I'd been walking for an hour, maybe two, letting my feet follow deer paths deeper into the Evernight Forest while my brain tried to process everything that had exploded in my face today.
Werewolves. Evan was a werewolf. Had been lying to me for months, years, maybe his entire fucking life. And instead of handling it like a rational adult, I'd screamed at him in front of his entire pack like some melodramatic soap opera character having a breakdown.
I stopped walking, leaning against the rough bark of an ancient pine that had probably been here when my great-grandparents were kids. The silence should have felt oppressive this deep in the woods, but instead it wrapped around me like a blanket. Comforting. Safe.
That was the weirdest part—I should have been terrified. Finding out monsters were real, that they'd been living next doorthis whole time, should have sent me running back to Chicago with my tail between my legs. But standing here surrounded by trees older than the town itself, breathing air that tasted like moss and secrets, all I felt was...
Peace.
Like the forest was trying to tell me something important, and I was finally quiet enough to listen.
Wind whispered through the branches above, and I swear it almost sounded like words.
We've been waiting for you.
Okay, now I was officially losing my mind. Trees didn't talk. Forests didn't welcome people. This was just my overactive imagination trying to cope with having my entire worldview shattered in the span of one afternoon.
But when I reached out to touch the bark, my palm tingling where it made contact with the ancient wood, the sensation that rushed through me felt like recognition. Like the tree remembered me from all those teenage walks, all those hours I'd spent wandering these paths with my camera, searching for something I'd never been able to name.
The connection was so sudden, so overwhelming, that I jerked my hand back with a gasp. But the feeling lingered, spreading outward like ripples in still water. Every tree within fifty feet seemed to lean closer, branches shifting in patterns that had nothing to do with wind. The very air hummed with awareness, charged with an energy that made my skin prickle and my heart race.
Home,something whispered, though whether it was the wind or my own desperate imagination, I couldn't tell.You belong here. You always have.
I pressed my palm flat against the bark again, eyes falling closed as warmth flooded through me. Not just warmth—welcome. Like the forest itself was embracing me, pulling me into something ancient and eternal and unbreakably real.
The ground beneath my feet thrummed with life, roots and mycelia weaving networks of connection that stretched for miles in every direction. I could feel it all somehow—the slow pulse of sap rising, the patient turning of leaves toward fading sunlight, the careful preparation for winter's sleep. Hundreds of trees, thousands of smaller plants, countless creatures moving through shadows and undergrowth, all part of some vast living system that suddenly included me.
We remember you,the sensation whispered through my bones.Little photographer, always watching, always searching. We remember your questions, your careful footsteps, your longing for something more than human eyes could see.
My breath came in sharp gasps as the connection deepened, showing me glimpses of things I'd never noticed before. Fairy rings of mushrooms that pulsed with their own light. Streams that sang lullabies to sleeping deer. Ancient stones that held memories of the first wolves to run these paths, the first humans to build homes in clearings carved from wilderness.
“What the hell is happening to me?” I whispered, voice shaking.
The answer came not in words but in feeling—a sense of rightness so profound it made my knees weak. I wasn't losing my mind. I was finally finding the missing piece of myself, the part that had always known I didn't quite fit in the human world.
The forest knew what I was before I did.
I stayed there until my legs cramped from standing still too long, palm pressed to ancient bark while the woods hummed welcome songs in languages older than civilization. When I finally stepped back, the connection remained—not asoverwhelming as that first rush, but steady and warm beneath my skin. Like a heartbeat that wasn't quite my own.
The trees around me swayed in what looked suspiciously like farewell as I turned toward the path home. But it wasn't goodbye, I realized. It wassee you soon.
The Callahan’shouse glowed against the October night, windows spilling warm light across the porch like an invitation I wasn't sure I deserved. My boots crunched too loud on the gravel drive, announcing my arrival to anyone with supernatural hearing.
