She tried to smile, then stood, knees unsteady but determined. “Okay. I’m ready.”
We ran again, silent but for our breaths. The torches behind us multiplied. The pursuit was gaining.
We reached the creek, half-frozen, the water black and angry. I helped Scarlette down the bank, then pushed her ahead of meinto the tangle of willow on the far side. We crawled, soaking wet and shivering, but the reeds hid us from the searchers for a minute at least.
We waited, flattened in the mud, listening to the men thrash through the brush above. Their voices were close now, too close. I caught the scent of sweat, metal, the sour tang of fear. My own, maybe, or Scarlette’s, or theirs. Didn’t matter. I couldn’t shift here, not with her hurt, not while the men with swords were still too close for a clean getaway.
But she must have sensed it, the change in me. She pressed her hand to my chest, right over the tattoo.
“If you go wolf,” she whispered, “I’ll be right behind you.”
I wanted to believe it.
The men passed, too busy shouting at each other to notice anything but their own panic. One of them nearly tripped over us, but then moved on, cursing the night.
When their footsteps faded, I breathed again. Scarlette squeezed my hand. “We need to make the circle before sunrise.”
I nodded. “If we don’t, they’ll catch us on the open ground.”
She looked at me, eyes shining in the moon. “Then we don’t stop.”
We didn’t. We ran, even when it hurt, even when her ankle bled through the bandage, even when I thought my own lungs would catch fire. The woods thinned, and the moon painted the world in a colorless hush.
In a clearing, Scarlette stopped. I nearly barreled past her, but she caught my sleeve.
“Here,” she said, voice hollow but certain. “This is where it happened. The first time I changed.”
I looked around. The space was empty, save for a circle of flattened grass, and the faint smell of wild garlic under the snow. I’d been in enough rituals to know what came next.
“You sure?” I asked.
She nodded, then set her jaw. “I want to remember her. Not the way she died, but who she was. She was always wild, always running. I think she’d understand.”
I got down on my knees, the mud freezing through my jeans, and waited.
Scarlette tilted her head to the moon. She whispered words—maybe prayer, maybe curse, maybe just the memory of her mother’s lullabies. Then she bit her lip until it bled and smeared the blood across her palm. She pressed her hand to the ground.
I felt the air charge, the kind of hush that comes before a storm. My skin prickled, every hair standing on end.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, but she shook her head.
“I want to.”
So I let the wolf out.
It hurt, as always, but this time it hurt differently. The bones reset, muscles snapping and twisting under my skin, fur erupting in a wave down my arms, spine curving until my shoulders split my jacket. My mouth tore itself wide, teeth lengthening, eyes burning.
Next to me, Scarlette changed too. She bit her wrist, the blood bright in the moon, then threw back her head. Her scream was a song and a challenge, and as it faded, her arms shortened, her hands curled to paws, her teeth grew sharp and white. The shift wasn’t easy—her body fought her, maybe more than mine ever had—but she did it.
When it was over, she stood beside me, smaller, leaner, her coat a silvered auburn with a stripe of blood down one foreleg. She looked at me, and for the first time since we’d met, she didn’t seem afraid at all.
We touched noses. She growled, soft, then turned to the woods.
We ran.
The world snapped into focus, every leaf, every heartbeat, every whisper of mouse or owl or man. The wind no longer cut, but filled me, driving us forward. The pain was gone. Scarlette raced beside me, her limp erased, her pace quick and sure. We dodged fallen logs, jumped ditches, skirted the edge of a hunter’s fire before the scent even registered. Behind us, the shouts of men dwindled, torches lost in the snarl of trees.
We ran until the sky paled, until the first crow called out from the crown of a dead oak. We ran until we couldn’t remember what it felt like to be hunted, only the joy of being alive.
