Not hunger.
Not dominance.
Fear.
Ancient and buried—dragged to the surface in violent flashes.
And what are you going to do?I shot back, forcing myself into his mind.Burst through her door? Eat her entire family and then her?
He didn’t answer.
He ran harder.
The city blurred around us—brick, metal, glass—until at last he slowed, crouching low at the edge of a garden wall. Lights glowed softly ahead. Human voices drifted through an open window.
Her territory.
Fenrir didn’t cross it.
He paced instead—restless, furious—circling the boundary like a caged thing.
She is protected, he said at last. Not by walls. By blood.
I drew the air through him, tasting it properly now. The scent wasn’t only biology. It threaded through her blood itself.
We can kill her, I suggested. I couldn’t allow Fenrir to become feral.
He growled, his pacing breaking into jagged, erratic loops.
Not yet. There is something—wrong inside her.
He was curious about her.
Perhaps we both wanted to see her monster.
Fenrir had his past to contend with.
Locked away. Bound in darkness.
Me?
I wanted to see what kind of monster someone like her was hiding.
His paws clawed at the boundary of her property, gouging faint marks into the earth. The fear ebbed as he warmed to my thoughts, excitement replacing it in a slow, electric surge.
Our gaze remained fixed on the soft glow spilling from her bedroom window.
A fissure of anticipation split through us.
Humans were simple. Dull. Predictable.
This anomaly peeled back the boredom—and exposed something hungry beneath it.
???
In our human form, we could hide in plain sight. We’d observed them at the restaurant on the night of her birthday—watched, waited—but left when her scent turned volatile, unmanageable.
Since then, the rage had festered. She’d made us impotent to human women.
