He pulled out his phone and called Elias.
"It's early." His cousin's voice was rough with sleep.
"I know. I need you to listen."
A pause. The sound of Elias sitting up, sheets rustling. "I'm listening."
"Someone was watching Chloe's cottage last night. I patrolled her perimeter in bear form and found traces of a scent, but it vanished at the tree line. Same disappearing act as the rot smell near the well."
"You think it's connected."
"I know it's connected. I found boot prints at the well this morning. Same pattern. They circle the stones, then vanish." Corin's jaw tightened. "Whoever's doing this has concealment magic strong enough to fool my bear. And they're watching her specifically."
Elias was quiet. "You think she's the target."
"I think she's central to whatever they're planning. The accusations, the whispers, the way everyone's been primed to blame her. It's too convenient."
"What do you want to do?"
Corin looked back toward the well, at the boot prints that led nowhere, at the crumbling stones that hid something old and poisonous.
"I want to find out who's doing this. And I want to keep her safe while I do it."
"Those might be conflicting goals."
"Then I'll figure out how to do both."
Another pause. Then, quietly: "You sound like a man protecting his mate."
Corin didn't deny it. "I sound like a man who's not going to let someone hurt an innocent woman."
"Same thing, in your case." Elias's voice held the undertone of rough laugh. "I'll ask around. See if anyone's noticed strangers in town, or locals acting differently. Keep watching her, but be careful. If whoever's doing this realizes you're onto them, they might escalate."
"I know."
"And Corin? At some point, you're going to have to tell her. About the bond. About all of it."
"I know that too."
He hung up and stood in the clearing for a long moment, watching the sun rise over the trees. The light caught the edges of the crumbling stones, turning them gold and pink, almost beautiful if you didn't know what lay beneath.
Someone in Hollow Oak had done this. Someone who smiled and nodded and blended into the fabric of the community and knew about old magic, hidden wells and how to make themselves invisible to shifter senses. And for whatever reason, they wanted Chloe.
His bear rumbled, a low promise of violence.
Let them try.
19
CHLOE
The rosemary was dying.
Chloe knelt in Freya's back garden, her basket half-full of salvageable herbs, and stared at the browning needles on what had been a thriving plant just last week. The spread was accelerating. Whatever was poisoning the land wasn't content to creep anymore. It was running.
She reached for the next plant, a cluster of thyme that still looked healthy, and began cutting stems with careful precision. The morning was cold but clear, the kind of February day that hinted at spring without delivering it. Her breath fogged in the air as she worked, her gloves stiff with frost.
She hadn’t even stuck her hands in the dirt to feel that the soil felt wrong. She'd noticed it the moment she'd started working, that familiar sourness seeping up through the frozen ground, but not the same as the disease that was spreading through the plants. This was something else. But she'd pushed through it, telling herself she was being paranoid, that the unease was just residual from the other night.
