He’s coming for me.
I don’t know what's safer: running…or being caught.
10
MY LITTLE DOVE
Anonymous-
She thinks she slipped away quietly. Seventeen heartbeats later, she’s out of sight—but never out of reach. She has no idea how loud she is. Every step, every breath, every little hesitation echoes like a gunshot to someone who was shaped to listen.
I watched the whole thing from thirty yards through my scope—watched her doubt, watched her decide.
She tries and fails miserably at covering her tracks. Thank God I’m not a bear, or she’d already be mauled.
I pack up my things and follow as she veers toward the road—my clever little dove.
A stag snaps a fallen branch, and she whips around, her eyes wide, searching the darkness for whatever made the sound. She crouches behind a tree like it’s not painfully obvious where she is. I could shatter the illusion of safety with one breath, but she needs a savior, not a hunter.
I pluck a strand of her hair from the branch she just ran past and twirl it around my finger; it still smells like her rosehip shampoo, although it now carries the scent of cloves as well.
I missed her last night. If it weren’t for the tracker I slipped beneath her car a year ago, things would’ve gotten messy when she wasn’t in her bed like she was supposed to be. She’s been unpredictable lately. I don’t like that, not when I’ve worked so hard to keep everything safe for her.
I’ve had these horrible nightmares about her falling for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why, but I wake up screaming her name. So I will continue to monitor everything she does to ensure she never falls again.
Lumi doesn’t realize what kind of place she wandered into out here. How dangerous it is when I don’t know where she is—I have so much to teach her.
She thinks she’s sneaky, but I’ve watched her through four years of vanishing acts. Everything she’s been through, and she still doesn’t understand how easily the world can reach inside and take from her. That’s why she needs me.
She stumbles her way through the dark. I bite the glove off my hand, letting the cold bite against my knuckles as I draw my knife. She brushed this tree when she tripped. I saw it—now he’ll see it too.
I press the blade to the bark, just enough for the sap to bleed. Mine. I carve the word exactly where her shoulder hit.
Let him scent her, and see that I was the one who came for her.
I always have.
I always will.
Andrik-
The moment I can no longer hear her breathing, I know she’s gone. There’s not a sound, a heartbeat, or a single pulse of warmth that lingers behind that door anymore.
My body moves before thought can follow. I lunge—claws splintering through wood as I rip the door from its hinges. Her scent rushes out like smoke from a dying fire, already fading.
“No.” The word slips out. “No!”
The cold inside me doesn’t fracture; it detonates, leaving nothing but wildfire blazing beneath my fur.
Floorboards groan beneath me before splitting under the sudden attack of my shifting form. My spine arches painfully, bones tear apart and reform with a sickly wet sound like branches snapping under the weight of heavy ice. My antlers jut higher, gouging the ceiling.
The cabin can’t hold what I’ve become, but I can’t stop it this time.
I don’t want to.
The forest answers the scream that ruptures from my throat. A storm ignites—icy wind slamming against the cabin, windows shuddering in their frames. Trees bow inward like spines cracking under a god’s command, snow churning into a cyclone.
I drop to all fours.
