I don’t knowhow long I lay here. Long enough for the snow to start falling quietly again. It settles over me like it’s trying to bury me, too. My tears don’t even fall anymore; they just freeze as they form in the corner of my eyes. Numbness starts to creep in—blessed, merciful numbness that swallows the grief and rage and leaves me hollow. Silence presses in from all sides. And then—a prickling at the base of my skull forces me into awareness. There’s pressure in the air like I’m not alone.
My body goes rigid. My heart slams behind my sternum, my vision honing in as adrenaline surges through my body. I shoot up, my hands fumbling around in the dark as I search for my knife. My eyes scan the tree line, searching for movement, for eyes reflecting moonlight, or anything that might tell me what’s out there, but there’s only shadows dancing between the trees. I know there’s something out there. I can feel it in my spine, and in the way every instinct inside me screams at me to run.
Maybe it’s an animal drawn to the smell of blood, or maybe…it’s whatever killed Mark.
Andrik-
“He was mine!” Her gut-wrenching screams tear through the forest, and it feels like claws raking down my spine.
Kaemorin.
She called him hers.How? How could a monster like him belong to someone like her?
I prowl low among the brush, watching as she throws herself into the snow beside his corpse. She’s sobbing…grievingfor a nightmare thatthalûnshould have buried themselves.
The bond hums maddeningly in my chest, pulling me toward her even as my mind recoils. After thousands of years, the forest finally delivers her to me… and she’s mourning a murderer.
She loved him. She must have. Why else would she scream like that for him? Does she know what he was? What he’s done?...Did she help him?
The questions consume me, but beneath them, there’s something else.
Want.
Thalûn,help me. I want her anyway. Even covered in blood and grieving another male. Even if she’s everything I should turn away from… I won’t.
I crawl forward, unable to stop myself.Just a little closer.
Her face is pale and tear-streaked. Her lips are trembling, chapped from the cold, or maybe from screaming.
Her long hair spills across the snow like brown ink, and I have to fight every instinct not to reach out and touch it.
She’skaemorin.The bond screams it with every beat of my heart, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
Listeningto her cry for someone else exposes something primal inside me—a snarling, possessive thing I’ve never felt before.Thrak’ven marûk veylûn.(I will rip the soul from your bones.)
Even in death, I want to unmake him for touching her. I want to tear what’s left of him apart, so there’s no body for her to cry at.
But I can’t, because she chose him first.
She springs up from the snow, and my entire body falls still. Her eyes flit from tree to tree, searching for me. I could reveal myself now. Step from the shadows and claim what the forest says is mine, but first I must understand. Why him? Why is her soul a locked door when every other opens to me like roots to water?Ves’tharil neskae.(Her soul is veiled from me.)
My claws retract first, curling into hands that tremble with restraint. My mane smooths back into hair. My spine straightens, bones creak and crack as the transformation finishes. I brace against the pain, but it’s already begun, and resisting only hurts worse.
When it’s done, I stand upright, antlers still crowning my head, eyes still glowing, but less beast than I was.
Something she might not run from.
Almost human.
Almost worthy.
She’s still searching for me, refusing to flee.My fierce little snowdrop.
Even if she never looks at me the way I long to be seen—even if her heart is buried in the frost beside a dead man.I am hers,and I will withstand it. I was built for pain
But she?—
She is the only sound the gods have ever given me that doesn’t hurt.
