Blood.
The night air slapped me cold and sharp, stealing the breath from my lungs. My exhale came out as visible mist, the temperature having dropped into the low forties while we’d been in Damien’s study. Cold enough to make my fingers ache, my ears burn, my breath catch.
I scrambled to my feet, legs shaking from exhaustion and terror. The grass was slick beneath my feet, treacherous, threatening to send me sprawling again. My clothes soaked through at the knees where I’d landed, cold water seeping into fabric and prickling my skin.
The field stretched out before me, dark and empty except for—
There.
Fifty yards away, at the edge of the tree line where the manicured equestrian grounds gave way to wilderness and state forest, I saw him.
Hyacinth’s form looked diminutive against thethingstalking him. His copper coat was stark against the darkness like a beacon, like a target, catching the moonlight that filtered through the clouds. His head was thrown back, neck arched, ears pinned flat against his skull in terror.
He screamed again—that same piercing sound that turned my blood to ice water and activated every protective instinct I’d ever had.
And then I saw the wolf.
My brain refused to understand what I was seeing. It was too large. Twice the size any wolf should be, probably four hundred pounds of muscle and fur and nightmare. Its coat was midnight-black with patches of dark grey, thick and coarse, standing up along its spine in a ridge that made it look even bigger. The fur seemed to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it, like the creature was made of concentrated shadow.
Its eyes glowed. Actuallygloweda yellow-green. Even more frightening than their luminescence was the intelligence in those eyes, seemingly human in their focus and intent.
Rowan’s words echoed in my memory, his voice quiet and certain.“She smelled of blood, Violet. Fresh blood.”
The shifter he’d warned me about, the murderer, possibly a girl in my philosophy class. This had to be the thing that killed that student.
And now it has cornered my horse.
“Leave him alone!” The words tore out of my throat, raw and desperate and utterly useless.
I was too far away. The wolf didn’t even turn, didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. It just circled Hyacinth with the patient confidence of a predator that knew its prey had nowhere to go, that understood cornering and fear and the sweet anticipation of the kill.
Hyacinth’s sides heaved with exertion and terror. Sweat darkened his coat, made it cling to the muscles beneath. His nostrils flared wide, red-rimmed, breathing hard enough that I could hear it from here—the harsh exhales of panic, the kind of breathing that came before hearts gave out from sheer terror.
I ran harder, legs burning with effort, lungs screaming for air in the cold night. Each step felt like moving through water, time stretching and compressing wrong, the distance refusing to shrink fast enough, no matter how hard I pushed.
Move, move, fucking MOVE—
The wolf lunged.
The motion was liquid speed and brutal economy, covering the fifteen feet between them in a heartbeat—explosive violence that clutched my lungs, ceased my breathing.
Long curved claws flashed in the moonlight like black knives. They raked across Hyacinth’s side and made a sound like tearing wet fabric.
Bright red bloomed across his chestnut coat.
Blood. So much blood. It poured from the gashes in his flank, four parallel lines carved deep into muscle, soaking his coat and dripping onto grass already dark with rain. The scent hit me even from that distance—copper and salt and iron, the particular metallic tang of blood that I’d smelled a thousand times in training accidents and injuries but never this much at once.
Never thismuch.
NeverHyacinth’sblood.
The sound he made wasn’t the whinny of pain from a cut leg or the protest of a horse being tasked to do something uncomfortable. This wasagony. Raw, visceral, the sound of an animal dying and knowing it, but fighting anyway because the body didn’t know how to do anything else. His front legs pistoned upward, a thousand pounds of terror and survival instinct. One hoof connected with the wolf’s snout, a solid impact that sounded like a baseball bat hitting a side of beef—hollow and meaty.
The wolf yelped and stumbled back, shaking its massive head. Hyacinth spun as if to flee. The wolf recovered and lunged again, but Hyacinth delivered a powerful hindkick—the wolf was caught midair by a pair of horsehooves. The sound of hooves striking the wolf’s skull thundered like a shotgun blasting a wooden barrel.
The impact echoed across the field, sharp and final. The creaturecried—a sound too human for the body it came from, full of pain and outrage and surprise, almost like a child’s wail of betrayed hurt.
Then it turned and ran. It disappeared into the tree line in a blur of dark fur and glowing eyes, leaving only the scent of wet dog and musk and something chemical.
