down at

e frantic beat of my heart. It wasn't bright enough to illuminate the forest f

ng my arm had alre

he faint glow weaving across the shallow wounds unti

sc

pa

t wa

me from a shallow puddle gat

e was u

my

en't gree

t f

and unsettling, glowing with an inner light t

t g

pale

il

and un

y to reveal green beneath, only to surge back again li

hat

heek, half-expecting my

at a

into the quiet and v

myself to keep moving, though

ed suffocating moments ag

am

the undergrowth, birds tucked into their nests, the slow, s

eneath

thing

p

astened somewhere deep in m

rd an

ard

een locked away inside

that unseen tether

emained, humming quietly beneath my skin as

broken, I

t almost ma

omethi

hey've never

ey won't be a

, the dense press of branches

the gaps,

truc

ma

ath

trees, smoke curling lazily from

warmly behin

ne liv

Forbidde

k laid claim

wolf would ma

have bee

tion, circled the clearing from a dista

walked strai

le certainty settling into my bones with the same in

where I ne

my hand an

moment, noth

T

ots

lo

asu

old man with steel-grey hair and eye

is posture steady in a way that s

ed at on

riefly before snapp

d there shock foll

have flickered

ough with disuse. "You're the Veytho

, lifting my chin. "And I

red face the first genuine smile

s, you can. Come inside, chi

esturing me into the

ted only

me, the mate who had called me defective, the family t

lay unc

, most

rs, po

ow

l po

r through five corrupted wolv

across th

ith a soft click that sounde

e were inside. "You never were. The reason y

eal

elt strange

who?

ne that begins with your real parents and the bloodlines they passed down t

firelight casting shifting shad

Have you ever heard

ook m

No

d ans

armchair and settled i

going to tell you a truth your famil

im, my pulse hammeri

d d