The porch railing still leans at an angle where it cracked under impact. Splinters scatter across the gravel in pale shards, sharp against the dark soil. In the early light, the damage looks practical rather than dramatic.
I begin stitching.
Each pull tightens the skin back together with reluctant resistance. Blood wells briefly at the edges before settling into adark line beneath the thread. I count softly to keep the spacing even and the knots secure.
By the tenth stitch, the ache has settled deep and steady beneath the surface. I tape gauze over the seam and flex my arm carefully, testing the range.
Restricted, but usable.
“That’ll hold,” I murmur.
The forest resumes its morning routine as if nothing happened. Birds shift through the trees, tentative at first, then louder. The air smells like damp pine and wood smoke from the mansion farther up the mountain.
I close the truck and head back inside the cabin.
The laptop waits on the table where I left it. I power it on and pull up the saved footage from the cameras before they were destroyed.
Six devices. Six short clips. All ending in static.
I open the earliest trigger and let it play through.
The wolf enters the frame at a controlled run, shoulders rolling smoothly beneath thick fur. I pause the image just before impact and zoom in as far as the resolution allows. The body mass sits heavy through the chest and neck, and the stride length matches the larger set of tracks I measured.
I pull up the next clip and position the still beside the first.
The second wolf is similar in size but not identical. The flank is leaner, the head slightly narrower, the gait spaced by inches rather than feet. The fur pattern shifts subtly under infrared, enough to confirm what my eyes already suspect.
“Two individuals,” I say quietly.
I replay the footage again, watching the approach patterns this time instead of the bodies.
Neither wolf circles.
Neither tests the air.
Each moves directly to the camera mount and leaps with precision that suggests awareness of its exact location. The destruction is efficient and immediate, as if the devices were obstacles to remove rather than objects of curiosity.
“That’s not random,” I say, leaning closer to the screen.
The final clip shows the larger wolf closest to the cabin. Its proportions fill most of the frame, broad shoulders and a faint lighter streak across the chest visible even in grainy infrared.
The same wolf that intervened.
I freeze the image and study it.
“You’re not an anomaly,” I murmur.
The difference in mass between the attacker and the defender is measurable even through pixel distortion. The one who attacked me was enormous by any known standard. The one who knocked it aside was larger still.
That aligns with what I remember.
The shift.
Bone folding in on itself. Fur retracting. The outline of an animal collapsing inward and reforming into a man with storm-gray eyes and a scar cutting through his brow.
I close my eyes briefly, replaying the sequence with clinical detachment.
“Assume perception is intact,” I say under my breath.
