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I craned my neck, trying to catch her gaze, but her fingers slid up and caught my chin, forcing my attention forward. With a huff, I managed, “Come on. I swear I heard something out there. And getting mauled by a bear isn’t exactly on my list of outdoor activities. Get off me.” The words were light enough to pass as teasing, but I was serious.

Her giggle chimed against my ear as her legs slipped from my hips. Before she pranced around to face me, her fingers squeezed my waist, sharp and deliberate. The jolt it sent through me was instant, and annoyingly effective, dragging a reluctant smile from my lips. “You wouldn’t have gotten mauled,” she said easily, flashing a grin. “And once your body starts healing itself…” Her voice dipped, amused. “That’s a hell of a ride.” She winked, a quiet huff of laughter slipping free, then turned and started leading us back the way we came, like the forest and whatever lurked in it had already been dismissed.

I caught up to her, falling into stride, and my mouth spoke before I could stop it. The words came out part demand, part wonder. “Tell me more. Tell me how I ended up in this town.” It was the least she owed me.

Valentina’s gaze finally found mine as she turned her head in acknowledgment. A knowing glint flashed in her eyes as she inclined her chin toward a moss-covered boulder nearby, inviting me over. She sat first, unhurried, waiting. “Okay,” she said softly. “Come sit with me. It’s a long story.” She patted the empty space beside her.

The moment I sat, she turned fully toward me. A subtle shift in the wind carried her warmth straight into my space, her scent locking my attention on her before I could look away. The smile that had lit her face moments ago vanished the instant I settled beside her. Val clasped her small hands in her lap and took a steady breath, closing her eyes as if preparing to drop the most insane story of a lifetime. When they finally opened meeting mine, I gave her an encouraging smile, or the closest I could form to one. "Your mother was accused of adultery when she became pregnant."

Great. I was a bastard.

The smile I had forced fell, and she paused just for second, but I nodded for her to continue. I would be able to handle it. I knew I was adopted, but everything before that, my birth was always in the dark. My parents never really explained how they got me. They just said they had been very lucky.

"When the accusations proved true, and when you were a day old, your uncle, the King, sent you off to die. He asked my father to go out into the woods and kill you with a dagger. When the night came, when it was time… He ran. He knew you were bigger than the scandal of your birth. Through the woods. Into the portal. It led him here. And when he arrived—" Her voice cut off as a deep, steady one took its place.

The pitch stayed low and measured, but my ears rang as his voice reached me from behind. “He gave you to us… to me and your mother. Told us to raise you. Told us that in your nineteenth year, you’d be taken back.” A pause. Deliberate. “We knew, just by the way he spoke, that he wasn’t like us.”

His voice, that voice, rolled through me like I was six years old again, being called inside for dinner. If my nervous system had felt rewired before, now it shattered completely. Tears rose without permission, blurring my vision before I could even turn to face him.

Every memory hit at once. Sundays on the couch watching baseball. His arm draped around my shoulders after school. The crisp suit in his casket. I froze. The sound of him was familiar in the worst possible way, sending chills skittering down my spine. A billion questions detonated in my skull. I had to be imagining it. I had to be.

Then Mark stepped through the trees.

My dad.

He was supposed to be dead.

My voice failed as his face crossed into view. Horror crept in slow and heavy, drying my mouth as panic tightened its grip. Killing a lion was one thing. This was something far more dangerous to the heart. His movements were too smooth to be human. His presence clung to the air like a warning. I’d never seen a man, a human, move so effortlessly, almost doll-like. Everything about him was… other.

“Once he revealed you,” Mark continued, his voice lowering, “Martha and I knew you were meant to be ours. That is how you were brought to us, by a midnight angel we thought…” His voice softened then, faltering when his eyes met mine, registering the panic burning there. The last time I’d seen him, his skin had been dull and lifeless. Wrinkles were etched into his forehead, dark bags carved beneath his eyes from years of working too much. Now, he looked like a memory pulled straight from when I was five.

His skin was smooth, tight. No lines. No exhaustion written into him. But it was paler, as though the sun no longer touched him. His hair hung longer now, brushing his ears, untamed. It was like someone had dipped him into the fountain of youth. Mark looked nearly my age.

Not like a man who’d lived almost fifty years.

“How are you here?” My voice cracked as I stepped closer, my eyes scanning him in disbelief. I had watched him die with my own eyes, and yet here he stood.

He was supposed to be gone. Gone to be with God.

He left me. He left my mom. He left us.

For a split second, guilt flickered across his face. He took a step forward, fingers twitching at his side as he spoke. “When you saw me in that casket, I was very much alive,” he said quietly. “Just like your mother is now, lying on that couch. The venom had only just entered my blood. It stopped my heart. Silenced every sign of life. But inside…” His voice dipped. “It was moving. Fire crawling through my veins. Burning everything black, then red again. Changing me, son.” His tone was calm. But it burned with truth.

“How did this happen?” I snapped. Everything raged at once, confusion, anger, betrayal, and something horrible I didn’t want to admit relief. “I cried for you. I thought you were gone. What are you even saying right now?”

Before he could answer, the forest torn opened behind us. A growl rolled through the trees, deep, monstrous, vibrating straight through my bones. Instinct took over. I turned, refusing to give whatever it was my back. That was when I remembered Valentina was still there. My gaze snapped from her to the shape looming behind her, a massive, fur-covered beast.

My body locked in place.

Valentina didn’t even have time to run. Claws ripped across her back in a blur of motion. Blood sprayed into the air as she screamed, a sound that tore straight through me. The smell hit next.

Fresh blood.

Her blood.

Richer than anything in the forest.

Intoxicating.