Chapter 35 #2
I did not answer immediately, because I was listening for movement, trying to determine distance and intent.
I turned toward Milo, who barely moved a muscle.
“Stay close,” I commanded.
The tone of my voice might have been enough because Milo did not argue. He simply moved without hesitation, falling into position as I placed myself between him and the deeper line of trees.
“What is it?” he asked, quieter now, controlled but tight at the edges.
“I do not know.”
That was not something I said often, and the one thing I never enjoyed saying.
Milo Hart let out a breath, slow and measured.
“Okay,” he huffed. “Okay, I’m right here.”
My attention returned to the surrounding forest. I adjusted my stance slightly, lowering my center of gravity, every instinct shifting from observation to fully alert.
If it moved closer, if it even thought of entering the clearing, I would end it.
Or I would draw it away.
Either way, it would not reach Milo.
Milo Hart spoke again, very quietly. “I trust you.”
I did not look back at him, but the words stayed with me all the same, somewhere deep and dangerous.
I did not have time to examine it. Trust was a fragile thing in any creature.
In a human, given freely and without hesitation, it felt even rarer.
I kept my attention on the trees ahead of us and listened for the thing that had disturbed the sanctity of my territory.
For a few long moments, nothing changed.
The clearing held its breath around us, every leaf and branch caught in the same strained stillness.
Then the wind changed direction again, and this time it brought something new with it, something sharp and ugly against the green, living scent of the forest.
Metal.
Oil.
Human sweat worked sour by nerves and distance.
My body tightened at once. I knew those scents.
I knew the deliberate, measured disturbance of boots placed with care, the kind of movement meant to pass quietly but never truly belonging to the woods.
Hunters did not walk like hikers. They entered the forest as if they had already decided something inside it had to die.
Milo must have felt the change in me, because his voice came softer from behind my shoulder. “That’s different, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said simply.
“What kind of different?”
I drew in another breath, testing the air more carefully.
There were two human scents moving through the trees.
One carried farther ahead than the other, sharper with sweat and disturbed earth. The second lingered heavier behind it, slower and less careful in its movement.
Neither was moving aimlessly. They were tracking something.
“Humans. Armed.”
Milo went still behind me. “Armed how?”
“I do not know yet, but they did not come here to admire the berries.”
That earned the faintest breath of sound from him, not quite a laugh, but close enough to remind me he was still holding himself together.
I lowered myself slightly and took a single step to the left, guiding him with the movement of my body rather than my hands.
The brush was thicker there, the shade denser.
If the hunters came close enough to see us, something had already gone horribly wrong, but I was not going to make it easy for them.
Milo followed the adjustment without question, careful now.
The hunters gradually approached, still hidden by the trees but no longer distant enough to ignore. A branch snapped beneath one careless step, sharp against the quiet of the clearing.
The other one reacted immediately.
Not with panic—with attention.
Its head whipped toward the sound, body tightening as it fixed on the northern tree line. Every part of it seemed prepared to move at a second’s notice.
Behind me, Milo shifted slightly closer. “Is it going to attack us?” he asked quietly.
“I do not know.”
I hated giving him that answer.
There were too many unknowns now. The other creature in the clearing, armed men moving through my territory—Milo standing between both without fully understanding how dangerous either could become.
Then one of the hunters spoke, too low for Milo to understand clearly, but loud enough that I caught fragments of it through the trees.
“… still here…”
“… saw it move…”
The second voice answered immediately, tighter than the first. “Keep your eyes up.”
Fear carried clearly beneath the scent of metal and sweat now.
That caught my attention more than the weapons.
Hunters accustomed to this forest did not move like frightened prey, but these men did.
Beside me, Milo shifted slightly closer. “Can you tell what they’re after?” he whispered.
“No.”
The answer disturbed me more than I wanted to admit, because whatever had brought armed men into my territory had also made them afraid.
And I still did not know whether the greater danger stood in the clearing ahead of us—or moved through the trees with a rifle in hand.
If they cornered the stranger in the clearing, there was no certainty where violence would spread afterward.
My attention shifted briefly toward Milo. He remained alert beside me, trying to stay quiet despite the tension gathering around us.
He was still human, still breakable in ways nothing else in this forest was.
I should have sent him away the first time the forest changed around the cabin.
The thought came immediately now, with far more certainty than before.
When the strange scent encroached on the territory; when the silence shifted—when my instincts warned me something unfamiliar had crossed into this place.
That was when I should have forced distance between Milo and the danger growing here.
Instead, I had let myself become accustomed to him.
Worse—I had wanted him to stay.
And now he stood behind me with hunters approaching from one side and an unknown presence trapped ahead of us, trusting me to keep him safe from both.
The fault for that belonged to me.
I lowered myself slightly, keeping my body between Milo and the clearing. “Milo Hart.”
“I’m here.”
“If either the men or the other one move toward us, you stay down until I tell you otherwise.”
He nodded without hesitation.
Ahead of us, the other presence adjusted its stance again, watching the tree line carefully.
The hunters were close now.
Too close.
Whatever happened next, I would move first.