“Cowardice makes no balm for guilt.” I hum into the wind.
He slips and barely catches himself as he runs harder into the night.
Branches claw at his coat like grasping fingers. Shadows coalesce around him, thickening the darkness until he breaks into another clearing.
His chest heaves as he wildly glances around the forest. His skin is ashen, and he’s trembling so hard he can barely keep himself upright.
His sweat mingles with the scent of relief when he thinks he’s escaped?—
Until the snow shifts behind him.
I dragone antler slowly against the bark, letting it creak like bones splintering in the cold.Let him hear it. Let him know I’m coming.
“The forest remembers,” I whisper, my breath frosting the air beside his ear. “Veyr’sal ves’kai, skar’thelûn.”(The frost is awake, and judgment comes.)
I givehim one last chance to answer the riddle: a whisper, a breath, an opening for redemption he doesn’t deserve.
But he doesn’t take it; of course he doesn’t.
A low crackrolls through my chest as the shift takes hold. Ancient magic surges through bone and muscle. My spine curves and contorts. Bones stretching, snapping, and rearranging with wet, sickening pops.
I fall to the forest floor on all fours, limbs trembling from a surge of instinct that’s older than time.
My face pulls forward as my jaw unhinges with a series of sharp cracks. My nose collapses, bone grinding against bone,until I’m left with a long, snarling muzzle lined with teeth meant for tearing.
This isn’t the form I use to judge.This is the form I use to hunt. This transformation is older, more primal—the beast beneath the beast.
When this form takes hold, there is no mercy, there are no questions. Only fangs, claws, and the forest’s final judgment.
The world snaps into focus—everyscent amplified with brutal clarity. Sweat, panic, and the sickly-sweet scent of old blood ooze from him. But there's something else threading underneath it all.
Something new… something that shouldn’t be here.
Andthalûnhelp me—Ilovethe smell of it. (Gods.) It’s soft, alive, and utterly wrong for this place. The delicate scent of honeysuckles fills my lungs, far too clean to belong in a trunk full of rot. But there it lies, clinging to a tattered purple ribbon wound around a cracked silver locket.
I inhale deeply, and the scent sears itself beneath my skin. This doesn‘t make sense. Not here. Not on him. Not in this box of horrors.
A slow, rising boil heats my blood in a way I’ve never felt before.
I inhale again, and I know with bone-deep, soul-certain clarity—it’shers.There’s no way something that smells this pure ever belonged to a monster like him.Right?
Kaemorin,I snarl inside. (Mine.)
Saelûn.(Soulbond/Mate.)
The heart that’s been silent my entire life pounds wildly in my chest. The sacred bond snaps awake in me. My ribs ache with the force of the inevitable binding.
My claws sink into the frozen earth as her scent continues to wrap around me. She never should have touched this box—and he never should have touched her.
I lunge.
He doesn't cryout at first, but the second I'm on him, his spine folds like kindling beneath my weight, and a desperate scream tears out of him. My paws land on either side of his chest, trapping him beneath me as I lower my muzzle until it’s inches from his face.
“Skar’vesin kai’lorûn,” I spit. (The forest marks you unworthy.) “Veyr’thalin ves saev in Thralûn narh veskae.” (May your blood find the lost. And silence be your judge.)
His hand flinchestoward his chest, but I'm faster. One claw hooks the chain and snaps it loose. The locket dangles in my grasp, her scent still clinging to the metal like a ghost that won't let go.
“You like their fear,” I growl, breath fogging directly in his face. “Let me show you what it tastes like.”
