January: Birch & Snowdrop (Months & Monsters #1)

Chapter 1 The Judge

THE JUDGE

Andrik-

They never see me first.

I tell myself it's better that way—that the shock of discovering me mid-step would send them fleeing before I could even speak.

Imagine stepping into a snow-covered forest, and there I am. A creature of winter itself—nine feet of muscle and ancient bone, staring straight into your soul.

If my size alone doesn’t send you skittering back toward the tree line, the jagged birch-patterned antlers clawing toward the sky might finish the job.

Then there's the rest of me.

Plush white fur, thick as storm clouds, covers my body—a ghostly mirror to the snowfall that surrounds us.

My eyes are the pale color of Alaskan glacier water. They glow at night like twin moons caught in the dark.

I know what I am… what I look like.

I'm not naive enough to think humans would come willingly if they knew what waited for them in these woods.

That's the trick, isn't it? Blending in with the quiet and letting the snow mask the monster.

It’s what I’ve always done—stay silent and wait for the call.

I often wonder if it's a curse that binds me here. It's been so long, I can't remember the truth of it anymore.

I’m aware of what the legends say—what human parents whisper over candlelight to frighten their children. But the real story has slipped through my fingers like fog.

All I know is that I’m meant to stay. To listen. To weigh the shape of each soul that steps into my forest.

I don't hunt.

I judge.

Those who lie. Those who cheat. Those who spill the blood of the innocent. They never leave these woods. The forest remembers their sins—and so do I.

That’s the actual curse, I think. Memory without meaning. Immortality without an anchor. I remember their screams, but never why I was born to hear them.

Every shriek. Every death. Every soul. They’re written into me like wounds the gods refuse to close.

Why?

That question echoes unanswered through centuries of silence.

It always starts the same way: an ache I can’t name, sharp and sudden, crawling up my spine like frost spreading across glass.

The air goes still around me. The trees hold their breath. My skin prickles with awareness as everything sharpens into focus. The land is alive in ways it wasn’t moments before.

I hear a single footstep sinking into the snow, and the riddle begins weaving itself in the back of my mind before the second footstep falls.

The forest is already whispering its judgment.

Immediately, I can scent that he’s male and that his heart is caked with the thick, festering sludge of what he’s done.

His victims—I hear them wailing in my mind—so many of them. Their terror floods through me like ice water poured down the spine of a corpse.

It's an unfortunate gift, the ability to cast judgment not from assumption, but from memory. Their memory.

I relive every wound he inflicted. Every scream he silenced. Every terrified last breath. I feel it all, and that piece of me dies over and over again.

It's how I know who deserves to leave and who doesn't.

He doesn't.

I follow him through the trees, silent despite my size. The smaller of my two forms moves with surprising grace. Snow doesn't crunch beneath my hooves, and branches don't snap against my antlers. I am a ghost between the trees, and he is none the wiser as I trail behind him deeper into my domain.

After twenty minutes, he slows and stops in a clearing. The moon is full tonight, swollen and silver, casting its glow across the darkness like spilled starlight. It should feel peaceful here. The kind of winter stillness that makes humans stop and stare in wonder.

It doesn't.

He sits on a fallen log and pulls something from inside his coat with careful, reverent hands. A box, small and wooden, polished so it gleams in the moonlight with a dull luster.

I move closer, watching as he cradles it like something precious. He’s completely entranced, blissfully unaware that I’m watching from the shadows.

He opens the lid, and the scent slams into me.

Chills rake along my skin. The fur along my spine stiffens. Every nerve inside me recoils in revulsion as the scents wash over me: blood, perfume, sweat, metal.

Overwhelming and sickeningly familiar.

Trophies.

He brought his trophies out here—like gods to worship.

Neatly arranged inside are pieces of people he’s taken: hair, jewelry, bits of torn lace, a tooth gleaming white against the satin burgundy liner of the box.

There are so many—too many. I don’t know why he brought them here—whether to bury them or remember them—but it doesn’t matter.

I know what he is.

He shifts on the log, thumbing through the contents with sick admiration.

I press one clawed hand against cool bark and let the words flow through me, threading them through the forest like wind. They curl low in the snowbanks before slithering into his ears:

“What wears the face of a father, but carves its name in children's screams?

What gift is buried under snow, and stains the world in silent red?

Thrak’ven ves thel?n kaelrin veskae, kaelrin veskae. (Sacred blood remembers, and the gods are watching.)

Tell me, wanderer—what are you, when no one's watching?”

He rears back, his head jerking from side to side while he frantically searches for the source of the voice.

The wind howls once, a breathless sound that doesn't belong to any beast—or man. He calls out into the darkness, but the woods swallow his voice before it can go anywhere. I wait, and I watch.

“Answer wrong,” I murmur, so low even the moon might miss it, “and the woods will answer for you.”

He bolts.

They always do.

He clutches the box to his chest, as if the twisted keepsakes might somehow keep him safe, as he stumbles through the snow with growing panic.

The trees don't move, but they feel narrower now, closing in around him. The wind follows him, whispering accusations insistently. His boots crunch over the snow like brittle bones as he picks up speed. Fear radiates from him in waves, wafting through the air like smoke.

“Cowardice makes no balm for guilt.” I hum into the wind.

He slips and barely catches himself as he runs harder into the night.

Branches claw at his coat like grasping fingers. Shadows coalesce around him, thickening the darkness until he breaks into another clearing.

His chest heaves as he wildly glances around the forest. His skin is ashen, and he’s trembling so hard he can barely keep himself upright.

His sweat mingles with the scent of relief when he thinks he’s escaped—

Until the snow shifts behind him.

I drag one antler slowly against the bark, letting it creak like bones splintering in the cold. Let him hear it. Let him know I’m coming.

“The forest remembers,” I whisper, my breath frosting the air beside his ear. “Veyr’sal ves’kai, skar’thel?n.” (The frost is awake, and judgment comes.)

I give him one last chance to answer the riddle: a whisper, a breath, an opening for redemption he doesn’t deserve.

But he doesn’t take it; of course he doesn’t.

A low crack rolls through my chest as the shift takes hold. Ancient magic surges through bone and muscle. My spine curves and contorts. Bones stretching, snapping, and rearranging with wet, sickening pops.

I fall to the forest floor on all fours, limbs trembling from a surge of instinct that’s older than time.

My face pulls forward as my jaw unhinges with a series of sharp cracks. My nose collapses, bone grinding against bone, until I’m left with a long, snarling muzzle lined with teeth meant for tearing.

This isn’t the form I use to judge. This is the form I use to hunt. This transformation is older, more primal—the beast beneath the beast.

When this form takes hold, there is no mercy, there are no questions. Only fangs, claws, and the forest’s final judgment.

The world snaps into focus—every scent amplified with brutal clarity. Sweat, panic, and the sickly-sweet scent of old blood ooze from him. But there's something else threading underneath it all.

Something new… something that shouldn’t be here.

And thal?n help me—I love the smell of it. (Gods.) It’s soft, alive, and utterly wrong for this place. The delicate scent of honeysuckles fills my lungs, far too clean to belong in a trunk full of rot. But there it lies, clinging to a tattered purple ribbon wound around a cracked silver locket.

I inhale deeply, and the scent sears itself beneath my skin. This doesn‘t make sense. Not here. Not on him. Not in this box of horrors.

A slow, rising boil heats my blood in a way I’ve never felt before.

I inhale again, and I know with bone-deep, soul-certain clarity—it’s hers. There’s no way something that smells this pure ever belonged to a monster like him. Right?

Kaemorin, I snarl inside. (Mine.)

Sael?n. (Soulbond/Mate.)

The heart that’s been silent my entire life pounds wildly in my chest. The sacred bond snaps awake in me. My ribs ache with the force of the inevitable binding.

My claws sink into the frozen earth as her scent continues to wrap around me. She never should have touched this box—and he never should have touched her.

I lunge.

He doesn't cry out at first, but the second I'm on him, his spine folds like kindling beneath my weight, and a desperate scream tears out of him. My paws land on either side of his chest, trapping him beneath me as I lower my muzzle until it’s inches from his face.

“Skar’vesin kai’lor?n,” I spit. (The forest marks you unworthy.) “Veyr’thalin ves saev in Thral?n narh veskae.” (May your blood find the lost. And silence be your judge.)

His hand flinches toward his chest, but I'm faster. One claw hooks the chain and snaps it loose. The locket dangles in my grasp, her scent still clinging to the metal like a ghost that won't let go.

“You like their fear,” I growl, breath fogging directly in his face. “Let me show you what it tastes like.”

Thrak’ven ves thel?n. (Sacred blood remembers.)

The forest leans in. The air thickens as it floods from me like a current—the memories I’ve been carrying. Every wound. Every cry. One final plea from every girl who never made it home.

I feed into him all at once, forcing him to relive what he did through their eyes.

His pupils dilate. He sobs as he claws at his own face, choking as he tries to escape memories that he never had to face—until now.

I don't have to rip his throat out; his own mind does it for me.

Silence settles over the clearing as steam curls in creeping tendrils and blood soaks through the pristine snow.

I loom over his body, my chest heaving, the locket still clutched in my paw.

Sael?n ves’kai. (For my mate.)

This belongs to her. I’ll see it returned to her hands or buried with my own heart.

I will find her.

I will—

“I know you're in here, motherfucker!” A furious voice cuts through the woods. “Come out, you coward!”

I go completely still.

That voice.

It’s her.