I don’t know how long I run before I see it.
A cabin.
Lit from within. Firelight flickering against the windowpanes.
I make a beeline for the cabin. It’s in a clearing near the outskirts of the forest overlooking the water. I look over my shoulder before running out of the protection and cover of the trees for the porch. I knock on the door frantically when a snap in the distance sends shivers down my spine. Fuck, he’s getting close!
I grab the handle. Locked.Jesus fucking Christ!
Panic replaces my remaining sanity. I rummage nearby flower pots and lift the door mat, hoping to find a key.
Then I see the keyhole.
Not just a keyhole—a brass etching, intricate, deliberate. A stag.
I feel the color leech from my face.
“No. No, no, no!” I plead. My hand shakily reaches to clutch the key hanging from my neck. No, it can’t be.
“Please, God, please, please, please!” I mutter to myself, willing with everything I have that this key will not work. Willing this not to be an elaborate setup. Willing this not to behiscabin I’ve run straight to.
Pulling the chain from my neck, I insert the key into the slot. With a gentle turn, the mechanism clicks with ease.
My last hope fades with that sound. It's not the sound of refuge but the sound of captivity. I’ve been herded to my doom.
“No,” I whisper through sobs.
A large hand booms on the door over my shoulder, startling me.
The heat of his presence—dense, inescapable, pressing into the air around me like a force of gravity, suffocating yet intoxicating. The steady, controlled rise and fall of his chest against my back, his breaths deep and measured, as if he’s the only one at this moment who isn’t unraveling.
I don’t need to turn.
I don’t need to see.
I already know.
A gloved hand moves around me, slow and deliberate, until the sharp tip of an arrow traces the curve of my cheek, gliding in a featherlight caress that is both a warning and a promise.
A gasp escapes me, too soft, too helpless, and I hate it. I hate the way my body betrays me, trembling under his touch, fear and something far more dangerous intertwining in a way I can’t control.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the tears still slip free, hot and unrelenting.
Then, finally, he speaks.
“I caught you.”
My stomach drops. My mind short-circuits, grasping for a reality that no longer exists because that voice—that voice shouldn’t belong to him. But it does.
Recognition detonates inside me, not like an explosion, but like a slow-burning fuse, unraveling every assumption, every fear, every breath that led me here.
I turn—slowly, unwillingly, as if my body knows that whatever I see next will change everything.
He steps back just enough to let me take him in.
The arrow slips from his grasp, landing with a muted thud at my feet, but I barely register it.
Because his hands—those hands, rough and strong, familiar even through my haze of shock—are pulling off his hood and balaclava.
