Lungs burning. Muscles screaming. The cottage still miles away and Kestria hurt and someone going to pay for this. Someone going to bleed.
Then it stabilizes.
Still weak. Still wrong. But steady.
Alive.
She's alive.
Faster.
Miles pass under my paws. The sun climbs and the shadows shorten and I run until my legs go numb, until the territory markers fall behind me, until the forest thins and thickens and thins again and then I catch it—blood. Faint at first, then stronger. Blood and horses and human sweat andfear. Multiple humans, recent, some of them wounded. And underneath it all, threading through everything else: my sister. Her scent tangled with a smell sharp and herbal I can't place.
I slow at the tree line and shift back. Bones grinding, muscles retightening. Done this too many times for the pain to land. Naked. Doesn't matter.
Nothing matters except what I'm about to find.
The clearing's a mess. Blood soaking into the dirt—some human, some not. Torn clothes piled by the woodpile—Kestria's. Shredded. Drag marks from the worktable to the tree line—a deer carcass, half-eaten, crawling with flies. Hoofprints leading away into the forest.
Men were here. They're gone now.
The cottage door is closed. I move forward, quiet. Every instinct screaming to burst through. The hunter holds back. The door isn't locked. Never is. I push it open.
Kestria.
Alive. Bandaged. Sleeping on the floor by the hearth, covered with a rough blanket, face too pale but her chest moving. Breathing. Steady. Deep. The bond hums low and warm between us now—close enough to feel properly again—and it says healing, resting, alive.
My vision whites at the edges. My hand finds the doorframe. Holds on.
Blood and tallow and dried herbs. And underneath all of it—warmth. Unfamiliar. Her. The human.
Then I see her.
White hair pulled back in a braid, pink threaded through it. Blood on her hands—dried brown under her fingernails, purple moonbright staining up to the knuckles, the rest caked with blood to the elbow. Sitting against the wall with her knees drawn up, head tipped back, eyes half-closed. Dark circles under her eyes. Shoulders caved in.
Small.
Soft where wolves are lean, the fabric of her dress pullingacross curves.
I look too long.
Fuck.
My breath pulls short.
I look at Kestria instead.
The human looks up at me.
Blue eyes. Clear and tired and taking in my face without flinching.
The scars. The missing eye. The torn ear.
Waiting for her to look away.
Nothing. Just looking.
Then her gaze drops. Takes in the rest of me. Snaps back up.
