Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
MILO
My pulse slammed so hard I felt it in my throat.
My hearing sharpened, amplifying the rustle of reeds, the distant splash of something in the marsh, and the thud of my own heartbeat in my ears.
The world narrowed and sharpened at the same time, every detail pressing forward as if nothing knew how to stay in the background anymore.
I realized I wasn’t breathing properly—air catching high in my chest, shallow and tight, like my lungs had forgotten how to function.
It wasn’t a bear, that much was clear.
The creature was too tall, the shoulders wrong.
The weight was distributed differently—it was balanced and upright, instead of hunched and forward-heavy.
Even the way it stood still wasn’t primal in the way I understood animals to be.
Bears had a slow, lumbering gait. Bears huffed and snorted. Bears snapped brush.
It looked nothing like the mother bear that had just backed away from it.
Somehow, my brain had already decided on one thing. Male.
I couldn’t have said exactly how I knew, but my brain had already supplied that much with absolute certainty.
Broad shoulders. Solid chest. Dark fur—almost black in the low light, thick across his frame but not uneven or wild.
He didn’t have paws; he had hands.
His head wasn’t that of a wolf, nor a bear, but something that held both and neither.
His eyes were fixed forward. Focused.
On me.
My fingers tightened around the camera still hanging uselessly in my hand. I didn’t lift it. The idea of raising it—of putting something mechanical between us—felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
This wasn’t wildlife.
This wasn’t a trick of light.
This wasn’t something I could file under a “rare encounter” and research later.
My brain tried anyway, reaching for anything that would make sense.
An unusually large bear. Someone wearing an elaborate costume. Adrenaline playing tricks on me.
None of it made any sense.
He had stepped between me and the bear, and the bear had backed down.
That alone told me everything I needed to know.
The air shifted between us again, carrying the smell of damp earth and clean animal—warm fur, wild and unfamiliar, but not foul or decaying. Just… alive.
It made my skin prickle, and I realized I was still standing exactly where I’d frozen.
“Okay,” I heard myself say again, quieter this time, because the silence felt worse.
He didn’t flinch or attempt to get closer. He just… watched me.
And for the first time since I’d set foot in these woods, I knew exactly what that odd feeling had been.
I hadn’t been alone.
Alone nearly felt like a relief when I booked this place. Clean, quiet, no expectations looming in the background.
This was something else.
His name surfaced before I could stop it: The Beast of Bray Road.
Urban legend.
My brain reached for that label now the way it had reached for “bear” a moment ago.
It… didn’t fit.
Legends didn’t stand in front of you living and breathing. They didn’t take up space. They didn’t force everything in you to pay attention.
But my God—had Mrs. Alvarez been right?
I looked at him again, more carefully this time.
Height—easily a head taller than my six-foot frame, maybe more.
Proportions—broad, powerful, but balanced. Not awkward or unstable.
Hands—fully formed, fingers long and capable, tipped with claws that caught the light when he flexed them.
He hadn’t moved like something startled by my presence.
He had moved with purpose, like he already knew the terrain.
The bear had backed down.
That detail stayed with me.
She hadn’t panicked. She’s simply assessed him, then chose to keep her distance.
Whatever it was that stood in front of me, not even a mother bear with young cubs feared it.
Apex recognized apex.
My pulse thudded harder at that realization.
He wasn’t myth-shaped.
He was power-shaped.
And he was standing ten paces away, looking directly at me.
My body wanted to move.
It didn’t care much for which direction. It just wanted motion—anything to break the stagnant air that felt like it was pressing in from all sides. My brain, on the other hand, started firing through options so fast they overlapped.
Run?
I wouldn’t make five steps. He was built for speed in a way I wasn’t.
Climb?
Too slow, and something told me that I didn’t want test his abilities
Play dead?
That was for grizzlies, and this was no grizzly. He wasn’t anything I had a rulebook for.
Back away slowly?
Maybe.
The camera was still in my hand.
I hadn’t even realized I was gripping it so tightly until my fingers started to ache. For one stupid, flickering second, instinct suggested lifting it—proof, documentation, something to anchor this moment in pixels instead of memory.
I didn’t.
The idea died almost as soon as it formed.
The mechanical click would be a line crossed. A challenge. An insult.
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the camera to my side.
The strap slid against my wrist with a soft whisper of nylon, the sound louder in my ears than it should have been. I made sure the movement was visible, not abrupt or threatening.
He didn’t react, only stood there with a strength radiating from him that I couldn’t even fathom.
My heart was trying to beat its way out of my ribs, but my head had gone cool and clear.
I watched the way his chest rose and fell—controlled, noted the slight turn of his head as he tracked my hands.
The focus in his eyes wasn’t vacant. It wasn’t the flat, animalistic stare I’d seen in deer caught in headlights or even in the bear moments ago.
It was aware, focused in a way that felt deliberate.
Fear should have been simple.
See something dangerous, react, run.
This was far from simple.
He hadn’t rushed me, hadn’t forced the space between us to collapse. He’d stepped in, ended the danger, and then held his ground.
And he was letting me stand there in front of him.
My pulse kicked harder at that.
I swallowed, keeping the movement small. “I’m not here for trouble,” I said, because the silence felt too heavy, and because it was the only thing I could think to offer.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Silently, he stayed exactly where he was.
And something in that serenity shifted—not in his body, but in the way I understood what was happening.
Up until that point, everything in me had been working through distance, exits, angles—how fast I could move if necessary.
But standing there, I realized he wasn’t forcing anything to happen.
He was waiting—holding his ground and letting me decide what came next.
My attention sharpened.
I became aware of everything—the weight of the camera at my side, the position of my hands, the way my shoulders had squared instead of curling inward. Even my breathing felt louder than it should have been.
His gaze flickered—quick and precise—down to my hands and back to my face.
Like he was attempting to predict my next move.
A dry heat crept up the back of my neck.
The smart thing would be to step back.
Create space.
My heel pressed into the soil behind me, and stopped.
Something in me resisted the instinct to pull away too fast.
I didn’t have a name for it, just the sense that sudden movement would change the situation in a way I couldn’t control.
“Easy,” I murmured.
The word wasn’t for him as much as it was for me—something to keep my own breathing steady.
It hung there between us, and he moved; a single step forward.
Not fast or aggressive.
The grass bent beneath his weight, and the distance between us shortened.
My pulse jumped hard enough to blur my vision, but I forced myself to stay in place.
I didn’t reach for anything.
If he wanted me gone, I would already be on the ground.
If he meant to hurt me, the bear would never have been the real danger here.
He moved again—just enough to close the space a step further.
Closer now, the details sharpened— the variation in the fur across his shoulders, a scar along his left forearm, pale against the darker gray, eyes that tracked too precisely to dismiss.
A memory surfaced, old and half-forgotten. After returning home from camp with Mrs. Alvarez and Elias, I’d looked up Beast of Bray Road on the internet. I was more interested in looking at the grainy photos that never quite showed anything clearly enough to believe than read any articles.
None of them prepared me for this.