The reins creak as she adjusts her grip. Then, softer, like she’s trying not to startle either of us, she says, “Stay calm.”
The breeze shifts. And something comes with it. Not a smell exactly, more like a presence inside the smell. Sharp. Wild. Heavy. I’m hyperaware of every sense in my body: how my skin prickles from the air alone; how my nostrils are flaring. My eyes widen behind the sunglasses as if they are begging to see again just this once. Just to see why the world suddenly got so still.
It feels like… danger. But then again, I’m the girl who thinks Michael Myers is coming for me in my home—which is not a cabin by the lake.
My pulse stutters out of rhythm.
Before I can speak, Honey gives a bone-chilling neigh.
It’s a shattering, terrifying sound that rips the quiet wide open. In the same heartbeat, she lunges forward, and then we’re moving—no thought, no warning, just raw panic in motion.
She bolts into a full, frantic gallop.
“Whoa…whoa! Honey!” I grab for the saddle horn, my knuckles slamming into the leather so hard it sends a jolt up my arm. The world jerks beneath me, every stride a violent jolt.
Air zips past my face. Branches whip against my sleeves. My bones rattle. My heart slams.
The rhythm of Honey’s hooves is no longer a pattern I can track, it’s a chaotic thunder—too fast, too wild, too wrong.
“Jenna!” I shout, but the sound carries in the opposite direction.
I can’t hear her horse. I can’t hear anything except the explosive pounding beneath me and the rush of every branch we barely miss. It feels like falling forward while sitting still. Like the ground is trying to rip me off her back.
“Honey!” I choke. “Please, slow down, sweetheart, please.”
But there’s no reasoning with her. Honey is lost to terror, all instinct and muscle and flight. And beneath the terror, beneath the wild pounding of her stride, I feel something else.
The unmistakable sense of being chased.
My lungs constrict, that awful fluttery panic blooming in my throat. I feel the world closing in around me. Trees whip past, too close. Air pressure shifts as we fly by each tree. The faint electric buzz of danger prickles up my spine.
Somewhere behind us, Jenna is shouting, her voice barely a thread in the wind.
Then she screams one word that punches straight through my chest.
“Wolves!”
My blood turns cold. Wolves. Real wolves. Not therapy dogs. Predators. Maybe even a little worse than Michael Myers.
My stomach drops, doing a freefall inside the gallop. My hands tighten until the saddle horn bites into my palms, the pain grounding me for a fleeting moment. But Honey’s panic is a storm I can’t outrun.
A branch snaps across my cheek, white-hot pain slicing a line of fire through my skin. I gasp, and the sound is thin and strangled. I throw my arms up to shield my face, but I’m too slow. Another branch claws at my forearm, and a horrific image of the trees grabbing at me like sentient beings flashes through my mind. Honey’s hooves skid hard, and her weight pitches forward. In the split second before gravity claims me, some part of me understands. I’m not in control. Not of the horse. Not of my body. Not of anything.
Honey veers to the left, and I slip. I try to grab on to anything to give me purchase, but it’s too late. The air rushes out of me, because suddenly there is no horse, no ground under my feet. Nothing but open air and the sickening lurch of stability dropping out from beneath me.
I fall.
At first it feels like I’m flying through the air for an eternity, but then suddenly I hit the ground way too fast. I land on my back, a shock wave of pain ripping through my ribs and spine. The breath explodes from my lungs in one violent burst and does not return.
I claw at the ground instinctively, fingers digging into dirt and leaves, desperate for something to anchor me. But my body is locked in that awful no-breath space, where the world is soundless, and all I can think about is the pain.
I try to inhale. Nothing. My breath hits a wall.
The panic is instant and primal, boiling through me, scattering my thoughts. I choke on nothingness. My rib cage seizes. Every nerve fires at once. Air is refused entrance to my lungs. I’m blind. Disoriented. On my back in the woods.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t scream for help.
