I moved. Ducked. Felt wind from the swipe brush my hair. Came up inside its guard and put the dagger through its throat.
The rogue dissolved into shadow and ash. One down.
The other four circled tighter. Learning. Adapting. Understanding that I wasn't easy prey, that I'd cost them to bring down.
“Come on then.” My voice came out steady despite the fear hammering in my chest. “Let's see what you've got.”
They came at once.
Training saved me for the first three seconds. Instinct for the next five. After that, it was just survival. Desperate, animal, refusing-to-die survival.
I took down another rogue before they overwhelmed me. Knife through the eye, into the brain, twist and pull as it collapsed. But the third one caught my arm, claws tearing through jacket and flesh in lines of fire. The fourth hit me from behind, sent me sprawling, dagger flying from fingers that had gone suddenly weak.
I rolled, tried to get up, and felt weight slam into my back. Pinning me. Hot breath on my neck, stinking of rot and wrongness, jaws closing around the back of my skull.
This is it, I thought. After everything. After surviving the attack that killed Anna. After fighting beside wolves and learning magic I never asked for. After finally starting to believe I might have a future worth living.
I was going to die in the Moon Clearing, alone, with grief still wet on my face.
The rogue's jaws tightened.
And then the night exploded.
Silver-gray fur and fury and a roar that shook the trees. The weight on my back vanished, torn away by something massive and ancient and righteously angry. I heard snarling, snapping, the wet crunch of bones being broken by jaws that had no patience for corruption.
I pushed myself up on shaking arms. Watched Daniel's wolf tear through the remaining rogues with brutal efficiency. He moved like violence made flesh, like the forest itself had decided these creatures had no right to exist and manifested something to correct the error.
The last rogue tried to run. Daniel caught it before it made three steps, brought it down, ended it with the finality that leftno question about what happened to things that threatened pack territory.
Then silence.
Real silence this time. The peaceful kind, the exhale after danger passed.
Daniel's wolf stood in the center of the clearing, surrounded by ash and shadow, moonlight painting his fur in shades of silver that made him look like something from a myth. Something old and powerful and impossibly beautiful.
He turned. Found me with eyes that glowed faintly in the darkness. And made a sound that wasn't quite a whine, wasn't quite a growl. Worry and relief tangled together into something that didn't need translation.
“I'm okay,” I said. “I'm...”
I wasn't okay. The adrenaline was crashing, leaving me shaking, leaving me suddenly aware of the blood running down my arm and the bruises forming across my back. Leaving me raw and open and completely incapable of pretending I had any of my shit together.
The shift happened between one breath and the next. Bones reorganizing, fur retracting, predator becoming man in the space of a heartbeat. And suddenly Daniel stood before me, naked and unbothered by it, face carved with concern that made my chest ache.
“Michael.” He crossed the distance between us, hands finding my shoulders, my arms, my face. Checking for damage with touches that were professional and desperate all at once. “How bad? Let me see, how bad are you hurt?”
“Scratches. I'm fine.” I wasn't fine. I was shaking so hard my teeth wanted to chatter. But saying it felt important. “Daniel, how did you...”
“I felt it. Through the wards. Felt them breach and knew you were here and I just...” He stopped. Swallowed. His hands werestill on my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones, holding me like I might disappear if he let go. “I thought I was too late. Thought I'd find you dead and I...”
His voice broke.
“I'm here,” I said. “I'm alive. You weren't too late.”
Daniel made a sound that might have been a laugh if it wasn't so close to a sob. Then he pulled me against his chest and held on like the world was ending.
I let him.
Wrapped my arms around him and pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in. Pine and musk and something wilder underneath, something that was purely Daniel. He was warm against me, solid and real and alive, and I held on until the shaking stopped, until my heart remembered how to beat at a normal pace, until the terror receded enough to let other things in.
