Chapter 28 Forest Calling #2
“Good.” She squeezed my hand once before releasing it, and the moment passed into something lighter. “Now finish your breakfast before it gets cold. I didn't slave over a hot stove just to watch you pick at perfectly good French toast.”
“You didn't slave over anything,” I pointed out, but I was already cutting into the stack she'd piled on my plate. “You made French toast. It's literally bread soaked in eggs and fried in butter.”
“Exactly.”
This was perfect. This moment, this kitchen, this family. It was everything good about coming home, and I wanted to hold onto it forever.
The forest felt different that afternoon, charged with the kind of electricity that came before storms. I'd been walking for an hour, camera hanging heavy around my neck, trying to capture the way autumn light filtered through pine branches and failing to find anything worth keeping.
Maybe it was me. Maybe the restless energy that had been building under my skin since breakfast was making it impossible to see beauty in anything that didn't involve Evan's hands or the way he said my name like it was something precious.
Pathetic. I was pathetic and lovesick and probably needed to get laid more than I needed to take meaningful photographs.
But then I heard it. A snarl that didn't belong to anything that should have been living in these woods, followed by a scream that was definitely human and definitely terrified.
I was running before conscious thought caught up with instinct, camera bouncing against my chest as I crashed through underbrush toward the sound of violence.
The clearing opened before me like a scene from a nightmare.
Sienna was pinned beneath something that had probably been a wolf once but now looked like hunger given form and fangs.
Her clothes were torn, blood painting abstract patterns across her arms and throat, and she was fighting with the desperate fury of someone who knew they were about to die.
The rogue was massive, easily twice the size of any normal wolf. Its fur was matted with things I didn't want to identify, and its eyes held the kind of emptiness that spoke of intelligence devoured by rage.
I should have run. Should have gone for help, found actual werewolves who knew how to fight these things, done anything other than what I actually did.
Instead, I stepped into the clearing and shouted, “Hey!”
The rogue's head snapped toward me, jaws opening wide enough to showcase teeth that belonged in fossil exhibits.
Sienna used the distraction to roll away, clutching her injured arm against her chest, but she wasn't moving fast enough.
Wasn't going to make it to safety before the thing decided to finish what it started.
“Leave her alone,” I said, and my voice sounded steadier than I felt. “You want to hurt someone, hurt me. I'm right here.”
Stupid. So unbelievably stupid. But Sienna was someone Evan cared about, was pack even if I wasn't. And sometimes stupid was the only option that let you sleep at night.
The rogue took a step toward me, muscles bunching beneath filthy fur, and I found myself raising my hand like I could somehow ward off a creature that could snap my spine like kindling.
What happened next defied everything I thought I knew about physics.
Something shifted in the air around me. My hand moved without conscious thought, palm facing outward like I was trying to stop traffic instead of a creature that could bite my head off without breaking stride.
The rogue froze mid-lunge, suspended in air for a heartbeat that lasted forever.
Then it was flying backward, not thrown so much as dismissed, like the forest itself had decided it didn't belong and politely but firmly escorted it out.
The sickening crack of tree bark splitting echoed through the clearing as the creature hit pine and bounced, scrambling away with whimpers that sounded almost confused.
I stared at my hand. Ordinary fingers, ordinary skin, ordinary everything. No light, no visible power, no indication that anything supernatural had just happened. But the forest around me felt awake. Watching. Like I'd just knocked on a door I didn't know existed and something vast had answered.
The silence stretched too long, filled with whispers I couldn't quite hear and the sense that I'd just crossed a line I couldn't see back over.
“What the hell was that?” Sienna gasped, struggling to her feet with movements that spoke of injuries worse than what I could see.
“I have no idea,” I said honestly, still staring at my palm like it might spontaneously combust. “Are you okay? Can you make it back to town?”
“I'll live.” She pressed her hand against the worst of the cuts on her arm, blood seeping between her fingers. “But Nate, what you just did...”
“I don't know what I just did,” I interrupted, because acknowledging it would make it real, and I wasn't ready for whatever this was to be real. “Let's just get you somewhere safe, okay?”
The walk back to town passed in tense silence, both of us jumping at every sound that might have been another rogue. But the forest felt different now. Protective rather than threatening, like something vast and patient was watching over us.
By the time we reached the edge of the pack's territory, Sienna was moving better, her supernatural healing already knitting the worst of the damage. But she kept glancing at me like I was a puzzle she couldn't solve, and I couldn't blame her.
I was starting to feel like a puzzle I couldn't solve either.
“Nate,” she said as we approached the pack house, voice careful in the way that meant she was trying not to spook a wild animal. “You should probably... I mean, Evan should know about this. About what happened back there.”
The way she said it made my skin crawl with implications I wasn't ready to examine. Like she knew something I didn't. Like what had just happened was significant in ways that went beyond a lucky break and some kind of freak atmospheric pressure situation.
“Know about what?” I asked, aiming for casual and landing somewhere in the neighborhood of defensive. “That I got lucky? That the thing decided I wasn't worth the effort?”
Sienna's look could have stripped paint. “Right. Lucky.”
She paused at the pack house door, hand on the frame like she was anchoring herself for something unpleasant. When she looked back at me, her expression was careful. Too careful.
“Just... be careful, okay? Sometimes things happen that we don't understand right away. Sometimes they're not as random as they seem.”
I stared at the door she'd closed between us, then down at my hands. They looked normal. Felt normal. Completely, utterly, boringly human.