*Sage*
If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be standing in a clearing in the Montana backcountry, listening to a naked werewolf explain pack etiquette while I took mental field notes, I would have suggested they seek professional help.
Now, I was the one who needed the therapist.
And the naked werewolf was wearing jeans and a thermal, which was marginally better for my blood pressure but terrible for my ability to ignore the way his shoulders moved under cloth.
“Rule number one,” Kieran said, as we walked along a narrow trail that wound through dense spruce. “Don’t turn your back on anyone you don’t trust.”
“As icebreakers go,” I muttered, “that one’s a little bleak.”
He glanced back at me. “You wanted honesty.”
“Honesty, yes. Unvarnished social Darwinism, less so.”
“Social what.”
“Never mind.” I stepped around a fallen branch, boots crunching on frost-hardened needles. The air was cold enough that each breath stung my lungs, but the exertion and the nerves kept me warm. “Who exactly am I supposed to *trust*?”
He considered that. “Mara,” he said. “Mostly. Rafe. To a degree.”
“I like that he only gets a degree,” I said. “What did he do, steal your favorite chew toy as a kid?”
“Edda will tease you,” he went on, ignoring me. “A lot. Don’t take it personally. It’s how she—”
“Tests new pack members?” I supplied.
His jaw flexed. “We’re not…putting you in the pack.”
“Right,” I said. “I forgot. I’m just the prisoner.”
He stopped walking so abruptly I almost ran into his back.
“You are not a prisoner,” he said.
“You literally locked me in a room overnight,” I pointed out. “I didn’t see a key on *my* side of the door.”
“We have cubs here,” he said sharply. “Children. You think I’m going to let an unvetted outsider roam around while the pups sleep?”
“Unvetted,” I echoed. “You make me sound like an exotic pet import.”
“You’re the one who wants to do experiments,” he said dryly.
“That’s not—” I exhaled hard. “Fine. Semantics later. Meet-and-greet now.”
He resumed walking, pace unhurried but sure-footed, like every rock and root in the path was an old acquaintance.
“How many of you are there?” I asked. “In your…pack.”
“Here?” he said. “Twenty-seven, counting pups.”
“Jesus.” I blinked. “That’s…a lot.”
“You’ve seen twenty wolves in a pack before,” he said. “Why should this be different?”
“Because wolves don’t argue about taxes,” I muttered.
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “We still need roads plowed and roofs fixed.”
“Do you…pay property taxes?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He shot me a look. “We’re not anarchists, Sage. We exist in your world more than you think. We just…” His gaze flicked to the trees. “Slip sideways when we need to.”
That image lodged in my brain. *Slip sideways.* Like a fish darting into deeper water when a shadow passes overhead.
“Do you…have jobs?” I asked. “Day jobs, I mean. Construction? Retail? Software engineering?”
He snorted. “Some of us. The younger ones. Edda does seasonal work with the ski resort. Rafe guides hunting and rafting trips. A few of the others rotate through logging crews and road work.”
“And you?” I asked.
“Me what.”
“What do you do when you’re not threatening scientists and arguing with your elders at dawn?”
He was quiet for a beat. “I keep us alive,” he said.
Something in his tone made me shiver.
“And before that?” I pushed. “You had to have done…something.”
“I helped my father,” he said. “Same as now, only with less gray hair and more yelling.”
“Your father was Alpha before you,” I said, piecing it together. “Like a…king. Or a president. Dynastic succession.”
He made a face. “Don’t use your human titles.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Monarch. CEO. Supreme Wolf Leader.”
“Sage.”
“Alpha Prime.”
He stopped again and turned fully this time, pinning me with those damned eyes.
“Do you always talk this much when you’re scared?” he asked.
I froze.
“I’m not—”
“You are.” His voice softened, just a fraction. “I can smell it.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “Well, that’s invasive.”
“It’s instinct,” he said. “We read each other through scent as much as through words. Fear smells like…metal. Like the air before lightning hits.”
“That’s…poetic,” I muttered. “If slightly creepy.”
“I’m not trying to be creepy,” he said. “I’m trying to keep you alive. If you start broadcasting fear like this around the others, they’re going to react.”
“React how,” I asked tightly.
“Most will back off,” he said. “We’re protective of fear. We want to soothe it. Some—” His jaw tightened. “Some might see it as…weakness.”
“And wolves don’t tolerate weakness,” I said.
“Wolves protect it,” he countered. “In their own. In outsiders…” He let the sentence trail off.
“Great,” I said. “So I’m either a baby bird or a wounded gazelle.”
“You’re a scientist dropped into a world you weren’t meant to see,” he said. “You’re allowed to be scared.”
“Then stop calling it out like I’m a malfunctioning smoke alarm,” I snapped.
He blinked.
Then, to my surprise, he inclined his head. “Fair,” he said. “I’ll…try to ignore it.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly.
He huffed a faint, almost reluctant laugh. “Fighting with you is strangely invigorating.”
“Happy to keep your heart rate up,” I said. “Now, meet the werewolves, please.”
He grimaced. “Don’t say that word in front of them.”
“Because it’s inaccurate?”
“Because it’s loaded,” he said. “Humans made it sharp. We don’t like the way it tastes.”
“Fine,” I said. “Meet the…shifters.”
He nodded once. “Better.”
We crested a small rise, and the trees thinned into a clearing.
It wasn’t what I expected.
In my head—because my imagination was apparently twelve years old and raised on questionable TV—I’d pictured some sort of feral camp. Tents. Fire pits. Maybe a log cabin or two with animal skulls on the walls and furs on the floor.
What greeted me was…a village.
Rough, yes. Built into the land instead of on top of it. But a village nonetheless.
Low log structures with sod roofs tucked into the gentle slope of the hill, half-hidden by brush and rock. A larger communal longhouse near the center, smoke spiraling from a hole in the roof. Laundry lines strung between trees, shirts and jeans and flannel shirts flapping in the cold breeze.
Children’s voices carried on the air—high-pitched yells and laughter. A dog barked. No, not a dog. The timbre was wrong. A wolf, but higher, thinner. A pup.
My chest tightened.
They weren’t…wild animals in a den. They were people. Living.
“Wow,” I said softly.
Kieran’s gaze flicked to my face. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Less…infrastructure.”
“We’ve been here a long time,” he said. “We’ve learned to blend. This valley is…for us. But we move through yours all the time.”
“Scouting me,” I muttered.
“Protecting our own,” he corrected.
A group of children burst from behind one of the lodges then, shrieking with laughter. Two boys and a girl, maybe six or seven, bundled in mismatched sweaters and hats. They were chasing something—no, *someone.*
A lean, gray-furred wolf with a white blaze on its chest darted between them, tail high, tongue lolling. It dodged their reaching hands with playful ease, knocking one boy gently into the snow with a carefully controlled shoulder bump.
The boy popped back up, giggling, and flung himself at the wolf’s neck, arms wrapping around thick fur. The wolf huffed, lowering itself slightly to the ground so the kid didn’t overbalance.
My throat closed.
The wolf’s gaze lifted.
Met mine.
My heart hiccuped.
Because those eyes—clear, bright gray with darker rings—were…human.
Not in color, no. In focus. In *awareness.*
The wolf stilled.
The children, following its gaze, turned.
A hush fell over the clearing with an almost physical weight.
Doors opened. Heads turned. People emerged—some in human form, some wolf, a few half-shifted with fur dusting their arms or ears pointed slightly too sharp.
They watched me.
Every nerve in my body screamed *run.*
I made myself stand still.
Kieran stepped slightly in front of me, not blocking me, but angling his body so anyone looking had to look past him.
“This is Dr. Sage Holloway,” he said, his voice carrying easily. “She’s the biologist who’s been tracking Pack A this season.”
Murmurs rippled through the gathered shifters. A few faces I recognized from a distance—figures I’d seen as wolves on ridges, as shadowy silhouettes in the tree line.
“She’s seen too much,” Kieran continued. “She knows what we are. She’s under my protection.”
He didn’t raise his voice on that last word, but it rang through the air like a bell.
Protection.
The tension in the clearing shifted. Some shoulders loosened. Some jaws clenched.
One woman stepped forward.
She was tall and rangy, with dark hair shot through with silver at the temples, skin the color of wet earth, and eyes like polished river stones. She wore a thick sweater over leggings and boots, and carried herself with the kind of weary grace that made me think of well-worn tools.
“Mara,” Kieran said quietly.
So this was the healer.
She looked me over, not unkindly, but thoroughly. Her gaze lingered on the bruise I could feel blooming at my hairline.
“You hit your head,” she said.
I resisted the urge to check it. “So they tell me.”
“Any nausea? Blurred vision? Headache?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” I said. “Though that may be more from the…existential crisis.”
A brief spark of amusement warmed her eyes. “You have humor. Good.”
“I have denial,” I said. “Humor is how it dresses up to go outside.”
She nodded as if that made perfect sense. “I’m Mara. I keep these fools alive when they insist on throwing themselves off cliffs.”
“I thought you were the brain surgeon,” I blurted, then winced. “Sorry, that was—”
“Honest,” she said. “I appreciate honest. And for the record, I refused.”
“Thank you,” I said, with more feeling than I expected.
“We may revisit that later,” she said matter-of-factly. “If *you* wish it. Or we may not. For now, we’re in triage.”
“Triage,” I repeated. “You’re a doctor?”
“Once,” she said. “In your world. A long time ago. Now I work where I’m needed.”
“Are there…others like you?” I asked. “In other packs?”
“A few,” she said. “Not enough. Our kind doesn’t do well in your institutions. Too many fluorescent lights. Too many rules.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Do you have any questions for me, Dr. Holloway?” she asked.
“About my brain?” I asked.
“About anything,” she said.
A thousand questions jostled at the front of my mind, elbowing each other for space. I picked the one that had been needling at me since last night.
“Why didn’t you do this sooner?” I asked. “Come out. Tell someone. Find allies. There are people who’d help you. Protect you.”
“Like your Fish and Wildlife friends?” a new voice drawled.
I turned.
A young woman leaned against the side of the longhouse, arms crossed. She was compact and wiry, with a mass of dark curls piled haphazardly on her head and eyes that snapped with mischief and something sharper.
“Edda,” Kieran said warningly.
She ignored him.
“You think your people would put us in a cute little protected habitat?” she asked me. “Design a conservation plan? Put up signs that say ‘Do Not Feed The Shifters’?”
“There are laws,” I said. “Endangered species…protections. Ethnographic—”
“We’re not an *endangered species,*” she said, pushing off the wall and sauntering closer. “We’re predators with too much history and too many teeth. Your laws would crumple the first time one of us tore out the throat of someone who pissed us off.”
“You don’t…just tear people’s throats out,” I said, glancing around.
A few of the gathered shifters looked away.
Heat crawled over my skin.
“Sometimes,” Mara said quietly, “we do.”
“In defense,” Kieran said sharply.
“Not always,” Kellan rumbled from somewhere behind me. I didn’t have to see him to feel the weight of his presence—like a boulder humming with restrained force.
“This is helping,” I muttered.
“We are not tame,” Edda said. “That’s what you need to understand, Dr. Sage. We’re not wolves you put radio collars on and track from a safe distance. We’re not lab rats. We’re not going to sit nicely while you take notes and then go back to our cages at night.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I snapped. “I—”
“You want to document,” she said. “You want to classify. That’s what you humans do when you meet something new. You put it in a box. You give it a name. It makes you feel safer.”
“Yes,” I said. “Because it helps us understand. And understanding can lead to…respect. Protection. Coexistence.”
“Or exploitation,” she said. “Or extermination.”
“Both can happen,” I said. “But pretending you don’t exist isn’t going to save you forever.”
She smiled, slow and sharp. “We’ve made it this far.”
“Have you?” I asked. “Because from where I’m standing, you’ve got rival packs sniffing at your borders, one idiot Alpha who can’t stay out of my camera range, and a world full of drones and satellites and bored teens with TikTok accounts. Your margin of error is shrinking.”
Her smile faded.
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not wrong,” she murmured.
Kieran’s jaw worked. “This isn’t the place—”
“It is exactly the place,” Mara said. “Our people need to hear this, Kieran. They need to understand that the world we hid from fifty years ago is not the world we’re hiding from now.”
“Fifty years ago, you could disappear in these mountains for months and no one would notice,” I said. “Now, a hiker posts a blurry picture of a paw print on Instagram, and within an hour a thousand armchair detectives are geotagging it and drawing circles on Google Earth.”
“A what on what,” Kellan muttered.
“Technology,” Edda said under her breath. “It keeps getting sharper teeth.”
“And you think we should…what.” Kieran’s voice was quiet, but the tension in it was a live wire. “Announce ourselves? Apply for a grant? Register as a minority class?”
“You think you can hide forever?” I shot back.
“We’ve hidden this long,” he said.
“You got caught *last night,*” I said. “By *me.* A woman in a tower with binoculars and a PhD. What happens when the next person who sees you is a kid with a phone and a YouTube channel?”
He flinched, just a little.
“Enough,” Mara said again, more firmly. “This is not a decision for this morning. Not with Northridge circling and the girl still smelling of the old world.”
“The *girl* has a name,” I snapped.
“Sage,” she said calmly. “I know. You smell like it. Sharp. Clean. Astringent.”
I blinked. “What does that even—”
“You asked a question,” she reminded me. “Why we didn’t do this sooner. The answer is simple: we did not trust you.”
“Me personally?” I asked. “Because you’ve literally been spying on me for months. That seems pretty trusting.”
“Your kind,” she said patiently. “Humans. Government. Corporations. Hunters. Poachers. Scientists with their white coats and their sharp little tools.”
“I don’t carry sharp—” I broke off. Remembered the tranquilizer darts in my pack. The tags. The microchips. “I don’t carry sharp tools for *you,*” I said lamely.
“You would,” she said. “If someone in a lab coat with a grant told you it was for the greater good.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested.
“Fairness is a human construct,” Edda said. “Out here, there’s just teeth and time.”
“Stop.” Kieran’s voice cracked across the clearing like a whip. “She’s not our enemy.”
“She’s not our friend,” Kellan said.
“Not yet,” I said before I could think better of it.
Four heads swiveled toward me.
I lifted my chin.
“I’m not blind,” I said. “I can see the risk here. For you. For me. For…everything. I could walk out of here tomorrow and try to pretend this didn’t happen, but we all know that’s not going to work. Not with brains like mine. Not with what I’ve seen. And honestly? Not with what I’ve *felt.*”
“What you’ve…felt,” Mara echoed.
“The way the air changed when you—” I glanced at Kieran. “When you shifted. The way the wolves below my tower *knew.* The way the whole valley feels like it’s holding its breath right now, waiting for something. I’m not a mystic. I’m not…you. But I’m not an idiot, either. Something bigger is moving under the surface here. Has been for a while, if I had to guess.”
Mara’s gaze sharpened. “Go on.”
“You’re backed into a corner,” I said. “By Northridge. By tech. By time. You can’t hide forever. And you can’t come out swinging without getting annihilated. So you need…a third option.”
“And you think that’s you,” Edda said, skeptical but curious.
“I think I could help,” I said. “If you let me.”
Kieran’s jaw clenched. “Help us how.”
“By doing what I do,” I said. “Observing. Documenting. Explaining. Not to the world—not yet. To *you.* About *us.* Humans. Our systems. Our rules. Our weaknesses. Our…potential allies.”
“You think we don’t know humans,” Kellan rumbled. “We’ve been hiding among you for generations. We work in your towns. We drink in your bars.”
“In ones where people don’t ask questions,” I said. “You avoid the parts of my world that would make your life easier because they’re the parts that make you visible.”
“Like what,” Edda demanded.
“Hospitals,” I said. “Lawyers. Social media. Data networks. Research institutions. You think all scientists are villains, but some are people like me, who care about the wild and the things that live there. Who fight for them. Who have access to funding and legal teams and public platforms.”
“And you’re going to march into your university and say ‘Hey, fun story, I met a bunch of wolf-people in the mountains, let’s write a grant?’” Rafe said dryly, appearing at the edge of the crowd like he’d materialized from the trees.
“Not tomorrow,” I said. “Not next week. Maybe not ever. But there are steps between ‘total secrecy’ and ‘full confession.’ Controlled leaks. Anonymous data. Building a foundation so that when—if—you’re ever…revealed, there’s already a narrative in place that *isn’t* ‘kill the monsters.’”
They stared at me.
Wind whispered through the trees. Somewhere, a raven croaked.
“You’ve thought about this,” Mara said softly.
“I think about how human systems react to pressure,” I said. “It’s my job. Every time we reintroduce a predator into a landscape, we’re not just managing wolves and elk. We’re managing ranchers and tourists and politicians and hashtags and idiots with guns.”
“You’re saying we’re a…predator reintroduction program,” Edda said, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m saying you’ve always been here,” I said. “But the ecosystem—the human one—around you has changed. And you need someone who can see both sides of the equation.”
“Equations,” Rafe muttered. “She really is a nerd.”
“Better a nerd than extinct,” I shot back.
Mara’s mouth twitched.
Kieran’s eyes were burning into the side of my face. I didn’t have to look to feel it.
“You’d do this,” he said quietly. “Help us. Knowing what it might cost you.”
“Staying here already cost me,” I said. “My job. My reputation if this ever gets out. My sense of…reality. But I’m here. I’m…your problem. I can either sit in your cabin and spiral or I can make myself useful.”
“You don’t owe us anything,” he said.
“I owe *me* something,” I said. “I owe the part of me that dragged herself through grad school and field seasons and endless grant rejections because she believed that understanding the wild was…worth it. That it mattered. That it could change how humans treat the world. You’re…part of that world. Whether you like it or not.”
He was very still.
“Let her try,” Mara said softly.
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them again, the wild light had banked, like coals under ash. But it was still there.
“Fine,” he said. “On my terms. Under my watch. You work *with* us, Sage. Not above. Not outside. You answer to me, always.”
“My advisor will be so jealous,” I muttered.
A ripple of amusement moved through the gathered shifters. Even Kellan’s mouth twitched, just slightly.
“Welcome to the edge of the world, Dr. Holloway,” Rafe said. “Population: you.”
“Charming,” I said.
“You’ll need a guide,” Mara said. “Someone to show you where you can walk and where you can’t. Who you can talk to and who will bite.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said automatically.
“No,” Kieran said.
“Yes,” I snapped.
“You don’t know our trails,” he said. “Our rules. Our tempers. You don’t know which pup belongs to which mother or why that matters. You don’t know which rock is sacred and which is just for sitting. You *need* a guide.”
“He’s right,” Mara said. “For once.”
“I’ll do it,” Rafe said.
“No,” Kieran and I said at the same time.
We both blinked.
Rafe raised his eyebrows, delighted. “Well, now I’m offended,” he said.
“You’re too…” I searched for a word. “Chaotic.”
“I am a delight,” he said.
“You’re a distraction,” I said. “And you’d probably push me into a river just to see if I can swim.”
“…Maybe,” he admitted.
“I’ll do it,” Edda said eagerly. “I can show her everything. The dens, the ridge, the—”
“No,” Kieran said.
“What, you don’t trust me either?” she demanded.
“I don’t trust you not to turn this into a game,” he said. “She’s not a toy, Edda.”
“I know that,” she muttered, deflated.
“Then who, Alpha?” Kellan asked. “You don’t like any of our choices. You going to do it yourself?”
The words hung in the air.
Kieran’s gaze slid back to mine.
Heat prickled along my skin.
“That would be…efficient,” Mara said mildly.
“It would be *intense,*” Edda said, eyes gleaming.
“It would be appropriate,” Kellan rumbled. “You made this mess, Kieran. You clean it up.”
“Oh, that’s fair,” Rafe said. “Make the man who can barely say ‘good morning’ without sounding like a threat be the one to teach the human girl how not to die.”
“I can hear you,” Kieran said.
“Good,” Rafe said.
Kieran’s jaw flexed. His gaze held mine.
“You’ll listen,” he said. “If it’s me.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.
“You’re the reason I’m here,” I said. “If I’m going to be stuck in your world, I’d rather learn the rules from the person who wrote them.”
His expression flickered.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
Rafe grinned. “Oh, this is going to be *fun.*”
“For you,” I muttered.
“For all of us,” Edda sang.
Mara just smiled—a small, knowing twist of her lips that made me uneasy.
“Come,” Kieran said, tilting his head toward the trees beyond the village. “Lesson one.”
“Which is?” I asked warily.
He turned, profile cut hard against the pale sky.
“How to walk with wolves,” he said.
***
By midday, I was exhausted.
Not from the exercise—though scrambling up game trails at altitude had my thighs burning and my lungs protesting—but from the constant sensory overload.
Everywhere I looked, something new demanded to be catalogued.
The subtle claw marks on a particular tree, marking pack boundary.
The way Kieran’s posture shifted whenever we crossed into what he called “old ground”—places where the air felt thicker, sounds dampened, as if the forest itself were listening.
The faint traces of other scents on the wind—musky, sharp, alien.
“Northridge,” he said quietly, when I wrinkled my nose. “They were here two nights ago.”
“On this side of whatever imaginary line you drew?” I asked.
He shot me a sharp look. “It’s not imaginary.”
“Tell that to the Game and Fish maps,” I muttered.
He ignored that. “This ridge is…contested,” he said. “Used to be ours. Their last Alpha teased the boundary, pushed further every season. My father kept giving ground, hoping they’d be satisfied.”
“And they weren’t,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Predators never are.”
“You think like a predator,” I said. “Even when you’re…human.”
“It’s not a switch we flip,” he said. “You think like a human scientist even when you’re watching a wolf tear open a deer.”
“That’s…” I stopped. Not incorrect.
We paused on a rocky outcrop that overlooked the valley. From here, I could see my observation tower—a tiny toothpick of metal on the distant hill. The sight of it made something in my chest twist.
Home. Safety. Before.
“Do you miss it?” Kieran asked quietly.
“Breathing?” I said. “Yes.”
“Your tower,” he said. “Your…before.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “It doesn’t feel real. It’s like remembering a movie I watched once and liked, but can’t remember the ending to.”
He grunted.
“What about you?” I asked. “You ever…miss something?”
He stared out over the valley for a long moment.
“There was a summer,” he said slowly, “when I was sixteen. Before my father got sick. Before Northridge started pushing so hard. Before the world…tilted.”
“Before you were Alpha,” I guessed.
“Yes,” he said. “I worked on a road crew that year. Human job. Long days in the sun, shoveling gravel, pouring asphalt. It was…simple. My body hurt at the end of the day, but my mind was quiet. I’d go home, shift, run with my brothers, sleep like a rock.”
“That sounds…nice,” I said softly.
“It was,” he said. “Sometimes, when everything is…loud, I miss that ache. That quiet tired. The feeling that if I just kept moving rocks from one place to another, everything would be fine.”
My chest ached for him—for the boy he’d been, for the man who’d never stopped moving rocks even when the pile became a mountain.
“What happened?” I asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “My father died. I shifted for the first time with his blood still on my hands. There was no more…quiet after that.”
I swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded once, as if accepting a gift he didn’t quite know what to do with.
Silence stretched.
Below us, in the far distance, wolves moved along a tree line—tiny gray motes against the snow. My wolves.
No. Not *my* wolves. The pack I’d been watching.
But they didn’t feel like data points now. They felt like…neighbors.
“Lesson two,” Kieran said.
I dragged my attention back to him. “I thought lesson one was ‘don’t turn your back on anyone you don’t trust.’”
“That was pre-lesson,” he said. “Lesson one was ‘don’t run.’ Lesson two is this: we’re not your animals.”
“I know that,” I said.
“Do you?” he asked. “Because you keep looking at us like we’re…behavioral studies waiting to be written up.”
“That’s how my brain works,” I said. “It’s not an insult.”
“It can be,” he said. “If you forget there are people under the fur.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I said softly.
His gaze searched my face.
“You watched me shift,” he said. “What did you see.”
The question punched the air out of my lungs.
“Pain,” I said, before I could overthink it. “A lot of pain.”
“That’s…accurate,” he said.
“Bones moving in ways they shouldn’t,” I added, voice roughening. “Muscles twisting. Tendons…reconciling two sets of blueprints at once. It looked like your whole body was…fighting itself.”
“It is,” he said. “Every time.”
“Why?” I asked hoarsely. “Why would your…evolution, or magic, or whatever this is, make it hurt so much? Why not…smooth it out. Make it easier.”
“Pain keeps us honest,” he said.
“That’s a shitty design principle,” I said.
“It keeps the shift from becoming…casual,” he said. “If it were easy, we’d do it all the time. We’d blur the line. Forget how to walk in your world. Forget how to sit at a table and use a fork.”
“You say that like it would be bad,” I said.
“You think we’re the only monsters?” he asked quietly.
The word made me flinch.
“If we let go of this shape entirely,” he said, “what do you think we’d do to your cities?”
A chill crept over my skin.
“And if we let go of the wolf?” he continued. “If we became…only this? Your kind? What do you think we’d do to the wild?”
I swallowed.
“Balance,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Balance. Pain reminds us to…honor the crossing. To make it a choice.”
“That’s…” I trailed off. Beautiful, in a terrifying way.
He watched my face, something like curiosity softening his features.
“What else did you see,” he asked.
“Fear,” I said slowly.
His brows rose. “Fear.”
“Not of me,” I said. “Of…losing yourself. Midway. Getting stuck between. Not being able to…come back.”
His throat worked. “Has that happened?”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. “I’m sorry. That’s…none of my—”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s happened. Not often. But enough.”
“How…” I forced the word out. “How often.”
“Once in my lifetime,” he said. “Twice in Mara’s. More, further back. When we didn’t understand as much. When we pushed too hard. Took too many shifts in one day. Tried to…cheat the pain.”
“What happens to them,” I whispered.
His eyes went somewhere very far away.
“They get…stuck,” he said. “Half-bone, half-fur. Too much instinct to walk your streets. Too much memory to run with us. Their minds…don’t survive it.”
Nausea rolled through me.
“And you…” I cleared my throat. “You…”
“We end it,” he said simply. “Quickly. Gently, if we can. They’re not…there. Not really. The part that knew us, that loved us, is gone.”
My eyes burned.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, knowing how inadequate it was.
“It’s why Mara won’t touch your mind,” he said. “Why she hates what she can do. She’s seen too many halfway things.”
“Halfway things,” I repeated, voice shaking. “God.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he reached out—slowly, giving me time to pull back if I wanted—and brushed his knuckles, very lightly, against the back of my hand.
I froze.
It wasn’t a grab. Not a hold. Just a…touch. Warm. Careful.
“You see us,” he said. “Too much, maybe. But you see.”
I swallowed hard.
“And you’re…people,” I said. “Too much, maybe. But you are.”
His gaze dropped briefly to where our hands almost touched. Then he pulled his back, as if he’d remembered my rule about not touching.
“Come,” he said gruffly. “You need food. And Mara will skin me if I keep you out much longer without letting her poke at your head properly.”
“Very reassuring,” I muttered.
We turned back toward the village.
As we walked, my mind churned.
Pain as a gatekeeper.
Balance as a knife’s edge.
Halfway things.
If I wrote any of this down, no one would believe me.
But it was real. More real than anything in my carefully ordered, data-driven life had ever felt.
And under the fear, under the disorientation, under the anger at being…taken, something else was taking root.
A dangerous, stubborn, impossible thought.
Maybe this wasn’t a cage.
Maybe it was a door.
***
That night, I dreamed of wolves.
Not the way I usually did, where they were distant shapes on ridges or blurs on camera traps.
In this dream, they were close.
Fur brushed my bare arms. Hot breath steamed against my neck. Paws thudded on packed earth all around me, a drumming heartbeat I could feel in my bones.
I ran with them.
Not as a wolf–my body was still stubbornly human in the dream, all two-legged awkwardness and pumping arms. But they flowed around me like water anyway, matching my pace, flanking me. I could feel them–not just with my eyes or ears or nose, but with some new sense, like a string tied from my chest to each of theirs.
Kieran ran at my right.
In the dream, he was all fur and muscle, his dark coat glinting with silver under the moon, his amber eyes bright and wild. He threw his head back and howled, and the sound wasn’t pain this time. It was joy. Fierce. Terrible. Beautiful.
Something in my chest answered.
I opened my mouth–and a sound came out.
Not a human scream. Not words.
A howl.
High and raw and aching.
The forest shuddered with it.
The pack’s song changed, twining around mine. Supporting. Echoing. Lifting.
For one impossible moment, I belonged.
I woke with tears on my face and my lungs burning like I’d been running for real.
The fire in the cabin had burned low. The room glowed with the soft orange of coals.
Someone had thrown another blanket over me while I slept.
It smelled like pine and smoke and something warmer, darker.
Kieran.
Footsteps shifted on the porch outside, almost silent.
I lay very still, heart pounding.
The door didn’t open.
He didn’t come in.
But he stayed on the other side of the barrier for a long time, a quiet, solid presence.
Guarding.
And despite everything—the fear, the uncertainty, the very real possibility that my life had just derailed beyond recognition—I fell back asleep.
This time, there were no dreams.
Just darkness.
And, somewhere in it, the soft, steady beat of a heart that wasn’t mine.
***