Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MILO
The shutter clicked softly, and I lowered my camera.
I’d been watching a pair of chickadees arguing over a branch for the last three minutes, the two of them hopping back and forth like tiny lawyers presenting opposing cases while morning light filtered through the pines in pale gold ribbons across the moss.
Moments like this were the reason I’d come out here in the first place. The forest didn’t care about perfect angles. It simply existed, and if I stayed quiet long enough, sometimes it let me witness it.
One of the chickadees finally paused long enough for another shot.
Click.
Awareness prickled at the back of my neck, a feeling like I was being watched. I slowly rotated on the spot—Calder stood at the edge of the clearing.
He had that impossible stillness about him again, the kind that made him look less like someone standing among the trees and more like something the forest itself had decided to shape out of shadow and fur.
His gaze lingered on me briefly before dropping to the camera in my hands. “Come,” he said simply.
But he didn’t turn toward the clearing where we usually met. Instead, he ventured deeper into the woods.
For a second, I just stared at him while he weaved between the trees.
The sensible part of my brain pointed out that following a seven-foot cryptid farther into the Wisconsin wilderness was probably how people ended up in true crime documentaries.
The less responsible part of me hitched my camera over my shoulder and follow him, because Calder had never invited me anywhere before.
He waited until I caught up, though he didn’t look back to check. He seemed to know exactly where I was by sound alone, which was unfortunate, because I was making plenty of it.
The ground was soft from spring rain, old leaves dark and damp beneath my boots.
That helped a little, but not enough. My soles dragged through wet leaf litter.
A dead twig gave a small, accusing pop under my heel.
My sleeve brushed against a low pine branch, and the needles scraped softly over the fabric.
Ahead of me, Calder moved through the same patch of forest as if the trees had made room for him.
Barely a fern bent.
Barely a branch trembled.
He didn’t hurry, but he didn’t creep either. He simply placed each foot with a kind of quiet certainty that made my own movement feel embarrassingly human.
Calder stopped beside a fallen log. “You step too hard,” he muttered.
I glanced down at my boots. “Good morning to you too.”
His ears twitched, but he didn’t turn that into a response.
I tried another step, and a wet clump of leaves squelched faintly beneath my sole.
Calder looked over his shoulder. “Every squirrel within half a mile knows where you are.”
I winced. “I’m trying.”
“Try listening first.”
That sounded simple enough until I actually attempted it.
The forest wasn’t quiet. I had thought it was before, back when I was standing in the clearing with my camera and my very limited human understanding of things. Once I stood still, however, and paid attention, sound came from everywhere.
Water dripped from pine needles, and a bird called somewhere high and hidden.
Something small worked through brush to our left, the branches creaked softly overhead.
My own breathing.
Calder crouched and brushed one clawed hand over the ground. He moved aside a layer of damp leaves, revealing thick roots twisting across the soil.
“Roots,” he said. “Stone. Packed dirt. Not loose leaves.”
I looked down at the tangled ground. “So the forest has rules.”
“The forest has warnings.”
“That sounds worse.”
He gave me a long look.
I pressed my lips together and nodded. “Right. Roots.”
Calder rose and took a single step. His foot landed on the raised curve of a root, weight settling with almost no sound. He paused before the next step, head slightly tilted, listening. Then he moved again, choosing a dark patch of firm soil between two clusters of leaves.
Nothing snapped or scattered.
The woods barely seemed to notice him.
I stared.
It was unfair, honestly. There were humans who couldn’t enter a room without making it about themselves, and here Calder was: enormous and impossible to ignore, somehow passing through the forest like a secret.
He looked back at me.
My face heated. “I was observing the technique.”
“You were staring.”
“For educational purposes.”
His gaze lingered a second too long before he turned forward again.
I stepped onto the root he had used—too fast.
My boot slipped, and I grabbed a branch for balance. Needles brushed my palm. A few damp leaves slid away beneath my heel with a messy scrape.
Calder closed his eyes–briefly, but I still saw it.
“Okay,” I panted, breathless. “The root and I had a misunderstanding.”
“Again.”
I reset my foot, slower this time.
Root first.
Weight carefully.
Pause.
Listen.
That seemed to be the order.
The first step worked. The second one… almost. The third ended with my heel nudging a hidden stick hard enough to make it pop.
Calder looked at the broken stick, then at me.
I pointed down at the ground. “In my defense, that stick was lying in wait.”
“The stick did not move.”
“That’s exactly what it wants you to think.”
He stared at me, and I just stared back.
A bird called somewhere above us.
Calder turned away first, but I caught the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before he faced the path again.
Tiny victory.
He led me deeper between the trees, stopping every few yards to let me try again.
The woods changed as we moved. The open clearing thinned behind us, and the pines grew closer together, their branches knitting the light into pale strips.
The morning air cooled under the canopy, giving off a scent of wet bark, mud, and sharp needles.
This wasn’t a trail in any human sense. There were no signs, no worn path, no helpful little markers nailed to trees. Calder followed things I couldn’t see—bent grass, broken moss, the angle of branches, and scents that my human nose couldn’t track.
I followed Calder.
That was easier.
Maybe too easy.
I kept finding my attention on him when it should have been on my feet. The width of his shoulders when he ducked beneath a low branch. The slow flex of muscle beneath fur when he stepped over a fallen trunk. The careful way his claws touched bark without tearing it.
He belonged here in a way I didn’t have language for.
I had photographed beautiful things before. Landscapes. Faces. Bodies. Light moving over skin. But this was different. Calder didn’t look posed by the forest.
He looked made from it.
“You are distracted,” he stated.
I nearly stepped into a patch of wet leaves. “I’m concentrating.”
“You looked at my back for six breaths.”
My mouth opened and closed, floundering for something to say. “That is a weirdly specific accusation.”
“It is true.”
“Still weird.”
Calder stopped near a cluster of roots and turned toward me. “Again,” he said.
I sighed and looked down. “You know, most teachers offer encouragement.”
“You have not earned encouragement.”
“Brutal.”
“Accurate.”
I huffed a laugh, then placed my boot carefully along the curve of the root.
Better, this time–the leaves barely moved.
I took another step.
Still quiet.
I glanced up, unable to help myself.
Calder’s attention was fixed on my feet, his expression intent. He looked so serious about it, like my ability to avoid damp leaves might determine the fate of the entire forest.
I took a third step, landing wrong and a wet scrape gave me away.
Calder breathed out through his nose. “Again.”
I groaned. “I’m going to be outsmarted by mud.”
“You are being outsmarted by impatience.”
“That sounds like mud propaganda.”
This time, Calder didn’t turn away, studying for me for a moment instead.
His next move wasn’t sudden or silent enough to startle me. He stepped around the roots, rounding me to stand behind my left shoulder.
My body noticed before my brain caught up.
The air felt different with him there. Warmer. Larger. Full of him.
I went very still.
Calder’s huge palm settled on my shoulder, careful but unmistakably warm through my hoodie. His claws didn’t press. He held back with the kind of control that made my mouth go dry.
“Too much here,” he whispered.
His other hand touched my hip, guiding me a few inches to the left.
The correction was practical, nothing more. He was fixing my balance, not pulling me closer, not lingering for the sake of it.
Knowing that did absolutely nothing to help the heat coiling in my belly.
The rough brush of his fur grazed the back of my arm. His voice rumbled low beside my ear. “Feel the ground before you trust it.”
I swallowed. “Right,” I strained, throat tight. “Ground. Trust. Excellent woodland advice.”
His hand paused at my waist for half a second, maybe less, but it was long enough for me to become painfully aware of every place he wasn’t touching.
Then he stepped back, and his warmth was replaced by cool air.
I focused on the roots because focusing on Calder was clearly dangerous.
Root first.
Weight carefully.
Pause.
Listen.
This time, I didn’t rush.
The ground held.
My boot settled without a single sound.
The leaves stayed damp and dark and undisturbed around me.
I took one more step.
Still quiet.
I looked over my shoulder, and Calder gave one small nod of approval.
The ridiculous little thrill that went through me had no business being that powerful. “Look at that,” I murmured. “I’m trainable.”
His ears flicked. “You are less loud.”
“I’ll take it.”
We moved on, Calder in front again, me several steps behind and trying not to ruin my own progress. The forest narrowed between two shrubs, then opened into a brighter patch beneath a cluster of oaks. Spring sunlight spilled there in pale gold, catching on wet moss and the edges of new ferns.
Something rustled near a fallen log.
I stopped, and so did Calder.