Rage builds in my chest, clean and familiar. The glade is sacred, protected by wards that should burn any mortal who comes too close. Yet somehow this human woman walks through barriersthat have held for three centuries, her footsteps light and sure as if she belongs there.
As if she has every right to be there.
I follow her trail through the deepening snow, my fury growing with each step. She moves like someone who knows the forest, taking paths that avoid the deepest drifts and the thorniest undergrowth. A woodswoman, then. Perhaps a hunter, though I smell no metal on the wind, no gunpowder or fear-sweat that usually accompanies those who come seeking trophies.
The scent grows stronger as I near the glade, and with it comes something I don’t expect—recognition. Not of her specifically, but of something deeper, something that calls to a part of me I’ve spent three centuries keeping locked away.
I slow as I reach the treeline, shifting back to my humanoid form but keeping my antlers, letting them catch the moonlight like a crown of bone and starfire. She stands in the center of the glade with her back to me, and even from this distance I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way she holds herself like a woman who senses she’s being watched.
Good. Let her fear. Let her understand exactly how far she has overstepped.
But when I emerge from the shadows, power crackling around me like winter lightning, she doesn’t run. She turns slowly, deliberately, and looks me full in the face with eyes the color of summer storms.
And the world tilts.
Her full scent hits me like a physical blow—pine and snow and something indefinablyhersthat makes every instinct I possessroar to life. My antlers pulse with light I can’t control, frost spreading from my feet in patterns that spell out words in the old tongue, words I haven’t thought in over a century.
Mine. Mate. Home.
“You don’t belong here.” My voice comes out steady despite the chaos in my chest, cold and precise as a blade between the ribs. “This place is forbidden to your kind.”
She should cower. She should stammer apologies and beg for mercy before fleeing back to whatever mundane life spawned her. Instead, she lifts her chin and studies me with the same intensity I’m using on her, as if she’s cataloguing every detail for future reference.
“I didn’t know,” she says, and her voice is exactly what I expected—warm where mine is cold, human where I am other. “There aren’t any signs.”
“Signs?” The word tastes foreign on my tongue. “You think the forest needssignsto mark what is sacred?”
Her mouth—full, soft, utterly human—quirks at one corner. “Usually, yeah. That’s how property law works in the real world.”
The casual dismissal of everything I am, everything I represent, should enrage me further. Instead, it does something far worse—it intrigues me. How long has it been since anyone dared speak to me as if I were simply another obstacle in their path rather than a force of nature to be appeased?
Too long.
I take a step closer, letting my power unfurl around me like wings. The air between us shimmers with frost and starlight,and I watch her pupils dilate as the magic washes over her. But still she doesn’t run.
“The real world,” I repeat, tasting the words. “And what makes you think your world is more real than mine?”
She glances around the glade, taking in the way the snow glows with its own light, the crystalline flowers that bloom on branches that should be bare, the aurora that dances overhead despite the clear sky. When her gaze returns to me, there’s something in it I can’t quite name—wonder, yes, but also a kind of hunger that makes my blood heat.
“Point taken,” she murmurs. “Though in my defense, stumbling into a fairy tale wasn’t exactly on tonight’s agenda.”
“Fairy tale.” The phrase sits strangely in the air between us. “Is that what you think this is?”
“I think,” she says, taking a step closer despite every visible instinct telling her to flee, “that I almost hit you with my truck last night. And I think you’ve been watching my house ever since.”
The accusation hits closer to truth than I care to admit. I have been watching, drawn by something I refuse to name, circling her dwelling like a wolf scenting prey. The admission sits heavy in my chest, alongside the knowledge that I should deny the truth, should frighten her away from whatever madness has brought us both to this moment.
Instead, I find myself drawn forward another step, until we’re close enough that I can see the pulse jumping in her throat, can smell the adrenaline singing in her blood.
“And if I was?” I ask, my voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. “What would you do about it?”
Her breath catches, and for a moment I think I’ve finally broken through whatever courage has carried her this far. But then her chin lifts again, and she meets my gaze without flinching.
“I’d ask why.”
The simple question lands like a physical blow. Why indeed? Why did I stand in that road like a fool, letting her see me in a moment of weakness? Why did I spend hours afterward pacing the borders of her property like a caged beast? Why does the sight of her standing in my sacred glade feel less like a violation and more like a homecoming?
I don’t have an answer. I have only the wild hammering of my heart and the way my antlers pulse with each breath she takes, as if they’re trying to match their rhythm to hers.
