Her trail is a desperate map carved into the frozen earth. Every breath she took, every turn she made, all look panicked to me.
I slow for a breath, nostrils flaring, charting the woods as I run. I mark every creature as I pass—harmless, harmless, irrelevant.
But when I hone in on the air surrounding her footprints, the world goes mute. If something was chasing her, I should smell the vital heat of a human body, but the air is meticulously clean, besides the faint billowing of honeysuckle.
It isn’t that nothing’s here; it’s that something scrubbed the air clean.
The trail falters with a sudden confusion in her scent, as if she stumbled or paused. I rear up on my haunches, and the loud sound sends the birds scattering through the finger-like branches. My hackles rise before I can read what it says. Directly ahead, carved shallowly into the pale bark of an old oak tree, is the word: M I N E. The beast in me knows right away this isn’t a word, it’s a challenge.
The carving carries no scent of the hand that made it—only the faint memory of her fear when she brushed past.
A snarl tears through the canopy, no longer of sadness, but of absolute, consuming promise.
My antlers burn with the need to strike something. I lower them to the bark before I know what I’m doing.
Crack.
The tree shudders, but the word remains. I draw back, a deep, furious sound stirring in my chest, and slam into the trunk again.
The world fractures into the sound of splintering timber and deep, grinding earth.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
I don’t pause to feel the ache in my skull or the shock ricocheting down my spine. I ram into it until the bark falls away in chunks, and the pale heartwood screams under the impact.I will not yield my hunt to the arrogance of a predator who dares to mark my territory.
With a final, explosive thrust, the ancient oak groans its last breath and begins its slow, thundering fall. The trunk shatters against the earth with a deafening crash.
“She is mine,” I snarl into the freezing dark. “Thrak’vesk kai’lorûn, kaemorin ves’thai. Veyr’shalûn narh etra’kai.” (Youdared touch what’s mine. There will be no body left for the grieving.)
Snow erupts outward in every direction as my words shake the forest.
“Give her back,” I roar into the sky. “If you take her from me, I will take everything you love.” I don't know if I’m threatening whoever took her... or the gods who dared give her to me just to see her taken.
Every broken branch and crushed blade of ice sings her name, and I follow them like a war cry.
Her scent is faint, nearly swallowed by the storm.
Branches slash across my shoulders, bark flays under my claws.The forest will part for me—or it will bleed.
Was she afraid of me? Is that why she left?
Of course she was. I am terrifying.
I shove the thought away, grinding the doubt back into fuel for the hunt. The memory of her skin is all that guides me. I think of the way she said my name like it belonged to her. How the single sound of the wordVelorinwhile she slept nearly undid me. I would have stayed like that forever—her breath warming the shallow dipof my throat, her fingers gripping my fur.
But the beast doesn’t believe in sorrow; he only believes in consequence.If she cared, she wouldn’t have run.
A sound off in the distance stops me dead in my tracks. A low grunt, undeniably male. It slithers through the trees. My ears twitch toward the sound; it’s not far off, two hundred and fifty yards at most. I bound in that direction, the earth cracking beneath my paws.Veylûn thran’kar saelûn?(Where are you soulbond?)
“Get away from her!” The roar ripples through the trees like thunder, shaking snow from the tops.
If they touched her—if they so much as breathed close enough to graze a single hair on her head?—
I can’t sense her pain, and that’s the only thing keeping me from going berserk. My eyes lock on the shadows between the trees, scanning, scenting, hunting. She’s still out here. I know it—I can feel her warmth flickering.
Thalûnhelp theveyrak’tharwho thought they could take her. (Bastard.) They don’t understand what I am, or what I’ll do.
The scent of fresh blood hits my nose. A whisper of copper on the wind, but it’s enough to drive a spike straight through my chest. My jaw clenches so tight the bone cracks. I drop my head and charge.Thrak’ven marûk veylûn. Etravisûn narh kaelorin,I promise to myself. (I will rip the soul from your bones. I will unmake you in her name.)
