Page 59

These woods in winter always felt like a gothic fairy tale left to rot—trees stripped bare, their twisted limbs clawing at the gray sky like they’re begging for a sun that isn’t coming back. I pull my coat tighter, cold biting through the seams, and check for my hatchet yet again. Snow’s coming; I can taste it in the air, sharp and clean. It used to mean peace. A reset.

Now it’s just the world getting ready to bury itself under another layer of death’s favorite blanket.

I fucking hate it.

Shadow bounds ahead, black fur a streak through the dead leaves, moving with the kind of joy that has no business surviving in a world like this. He lunges after a squirrel, then a rabbit, then nothing at all—disappearing and reappearing between trees like he’s stitched from the woods themselves.

I’m just opening my mouth to call him back when he freezes.

So does Malek.

It happens in the same breath—Shadow’s body going rigid mid-step, Malek’s stride cutting clean off. No look exchanged. No command. Just…stillness.

The kind that drops into the world too fast, sucking the warmth out of the air.

My heartbeat stalls as I watch them, both facing different directions but somehow attuned to the exact same thing. I don’t hear it. Whatever it is, the forest swallowed it before it reached me.

Shadow’s nose twitches once. Twice. Then he goes statue-still. Not tracking. Not hunting. Listening. But listening like prey listens—not predator.

Like something in the air told him to stop breathing.

A sharp coldness creeps up my spine.

Malek’s eyes flick to Shadow, barely enough movement to register—just a tightening around the edges. Then he gives the smallest nod. Small, but final.

Shadow darts off the path instantly, silent as a blade slipping back into its sheath, vanishing into the underbrush so seamlessly it’s like he was never real to begin with.

“Wh—”

Malek doesn’t even look at me. Just lifts a finger to his lips—one clean, quiet gesture that shuts my throat like a trap. His eyes are fixed over my shoulder, not wide with fear but narrowed with calculation. Listening in a way that makes me feel deaf, stupid, human.

His head tilts a fraction. His jaw clenches. Listening—like whatever he hears, he’s already decided what he’ll do about it.

I hold my breath without meaning to.

A moment later, the tension bleeds out of his stance. He looks at me again, something unreadable easing behind his eyes.

“Come on,” he murmurs, the softness undercut by the coiled tension still in his shoulders.

My breath rolls out of me like fog as I step closer than I need to. “Did you train him to do that?”

Malek keeps walking, his boots whispering over the leaves. “No,” he mutters, voice low, like the forest might still be listening. “I just learned how to listen.”

We round a thicket of trees and find Shadow sitting on his hind legs, perfectly still, his head swiveling left, then right, then left again—sharp, confused movements, like the world in front of him isn’t matching whatever scent is crawling through his nose.

“Shadow,” I call, stepping forward⁠—

Malek’s hand clamps onto my coat sleeve and yanks me back so hard my boots skid across the dead leaves, the ground tilting under me. The breath punches out of my lungs. I nearly hit the dirt.

“What the hell?” I hiss, shoving at him, heat flaring through my chest.

But Malek doesn’t answer, hell he doesn’t even look at me.

He stands there like the forest carved him out of stone—every muscle locked, spine drawn taut, mouth set but shaking at the corners. His eyes are wide in a way I’ve never seen on him before. Not alert. Not calculating.

Something worse.

A thin sheen of sweat beads along his temples despite the cold. His breath pulls slow and quiet, too controlled, like he’s afraid the air itself might hear him. The whole clearing seems to constrict around him, branches tightening, shadows leaning in.