Still he waited.
His bear was calmer now, appeased by proximity, but the protective instinct hadn't faded. It wouldn't let him leave. Wouldn't let him walk away while she was alone and something in the air felt wrong.
Around midnight, he stripped off his clothes behind the oak, folding them neatly and tucking them into the hollow at the base of the trunk. The shift came fast, his body remembering the shape it had worn so often lately.
He circled her property again, this time with his nose working. The cold night air carried a hundred different scents: wood smoke from distant chimneys, the musk of deer that had passed through hours ago, the green-and-growing smell of Chloe herself, faint but unmistakable.
And something else.
He paused at the edge of her garden, nostrils flaring. A human had been here recently. Male, from the scent. But the trail was faint, already fading, as if whoever left it had been careful not to linger. Or had masked their presence somehow.
Corin followed the scent to the tree line, where it dissolved into nothing. One moment it was there, faint but traceable. The next, gone. Like the person had simply vanished.
The same way the rot smell vanished near the well.
His bear growled, a low rumble of frustration. Someone had been watching Chloe tonight. Had stood in those trees, close enough to see her moving through her cottage. And then they'd disappeared without a trace.
This wasn't random. This was targeted.
He stayed until dawn began to lighten the sky, patrolling the perimeter in slow circles, his massive body moving silent through the underbrush. Nothing else stirred. Whoever had been watching was long gone. But they'd been here. He was certain of it.
When the first gray light touched the horizon, Corin shifted back and pulled on his clothes with numb fingers. His body ached from the long night, but his mind was sharp, turning over possibilities.
The well.
He needed to check the well again. See if whoever had been watching Chloe had also been there.
The drive took twenty minutes, the roads empty at this hour. He parked at the rim of the orchard and walked the rest of the way, following the path he'd worn through the trees over the past week.
The clearing looked the same as before. Crumbling stones, collapsed cover, the hole he'd dug still visible near the base. But this time, in the pale morning light, he noticed something he'd missed before.
Boot prints.
They were faint, partially filled in by the thawing mud, but unmistakable. Someone had walked a careful path around the well, staying close to the stones, their steps deliberate andmeasured. The prints led from the direction of town, circled the well twice, and then headed toward the tree line where they vanished.
Just like the scent at Chloe's cottage. Just like the rot smell that dissipated before reaching its source.
Corin crouched beside the clearest print, studying it. Standard work boot, size ten or eleven. Common enough in Hollow Oak that it could belong to half the men in town. But the pattern of the walk was distinctive. Careful. Methodical. The same precision he'd seen in the way the well seal had been cracked.
Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.
He followed the prints as far as they went, which wasn't far. They faded at the tree line, the same spot where his bear had lost the scent during his night patrol. Some kind of concealment magic, he guessed. Strong enough to mask both physical tracks and scent trails.
That took knowledge. Skill. Resources.
This wasn't some random troublemaker. This was someone with access to real magic, someone who understood how to hide their work from shifter senses. Someone who walked freely through Hollow Oak without raising suspicion.
And they were watching Chloe.
The realization settled into his gut like a stone. The broken well seal. The spreading sickness. The whispers blaming her druid blood. And now someone lurking outside her cottage at night, their presence masked by the same magic that hid the contamination's source.
Chloe wasn't just a convenient scapegoat. She was the target.
Corin stood slowly, his mind racing. Why her? What did she have that someone wanted? Her druid blood made her sensitive to the land, able to feel things others couldn't. Maybe that was exactly the problem. Maybe whoever poisoned the well knewthat a druid would eventually sense the wrongness, would start asking questions, would get too close to the truth.
Or maybe they wanted her abilities for something else entirely.
Either way, she was in danger. More danger than she knew.
