Page 42 of Wild Thorns

Me: I don’t know. Both? Neither?

Tara: That’s not ominous at all. Call me tomorrow.

I put the phone down and looked at the preserve again. A shadow moved at the edge of the treeline, large, low to the ground, moving with the fluid grace of something at home in the dark. I watched it disappear into the woods without feeling any particular alarm.

I didn’t check the locks before bed.

I slept better than I had in years.

But sometime in the night, I woke to a sound I couldn't place. Not the howling. Not the wind. Something closer. Something inside.

I lay perfectly still, the way Marcus had taught me to lie still, and listened.

Breathing. Soft and steady. Coming from somewhere near my window.

My heart seized. My hand crept toward the nightstand, toward the pepper spray I still kept there even though I'd stopped sleeping with my phone under my pillow.

Then the breathing moved. Shifted. And I realized it was coming from outside the window, not inside. Something was on my porch. Something large enough that I could hear it breathing through the glass.

I should have been terrified. I should have called out, should have grabbed my phone, should have done any of the things a rational person would do when they woke to find something breathing outside their bedroom window.

Instead, I got up and walked to the glass.

The shape on my porch was massive. Dark fur, silver-tipped in the moonlight. Eyes that caught the light and reflected it back, golden and steady.

A wolf. There was a wolf on my porch.

It watched me watching it. Then, slowly, deliberately, it lowered its head and pressed its nose against the glass, right where my hand was resting on the other side.

I felt the warmth of its breath through the window. Felt something else too, something that hummed in my chest like recognition, like homecoming, like a lock finally finding its key.

The wolf held my gaze for one long moment. Then it turned and disappeared into the night, moving toward the preserve with that fluid grace I was learning to recognize.

Chapter twelve

Invisible

Icame to Magnolia Creek planning to be invisible.

Six weeks ago, that had been the whole point. Find a place no one knew me. Keep my head down. Work remotely, pay rent on time, don’t make connections that could be traced or used against me. Exist in the margins of someone else’s town until I figured out what came next.

I’d gotten good at being invisible. Two years with Marcus had taught me how to move through spaces without leaving a mark, how to smile without engaging, how to be present without being seen. It was a survival skill, honed through necessity, and I thought I could deploy it indefinitely.

I was wrong.

Somewhere along the way, that plan had fallen apart completely.

I was known now. Mel at The Daily Grind knew my order and saved me the good muffins. She’d started setting aside the blueberry ones, my favorite, before I even walked in, leaving them on a plate behind the counter with a sticky note that said S. The first time she’d done it, I’d stared at the note for too long, trying to remember the last time someone had anticipated what I wanted without being asked.

Lila at the studio treated me like I'd been there for years instead of weeks. She’d given me my own desk, my own coffee mug, my own drawer of supplies. She’d stopped introducing me to clients as “the new freelancer” and started just saying “my lead designer, Serena.” The title had made something warm bloom in my chest the first time I heard it.

People on the street waved, asked how I was settling in, and how did I like it out at the Thornwood place. The woman at the bookstore, Vera, had ordered titles she thought I’d like without being asked. The guy who ran the hardware store knew I was “the one staying at Thornwood” and always asked after “those Voss boys” with a curious look I didn’t quite understand.

I had a routine. I had friends, or something close to friends. I had a place in this town that hadn’t existed six weeks ago.

I had stopped checking the locks before going to bed.

That last one still startled me sometimes. I’d spent two years double-checking every entry point, testing every window, lying awake listening for sounds that didn’t belong. And now I fell asleep with my window open, letting in the night sounds of the preserve, trusting that nothing harmful would find its way in.