Chapter 10 My Little Dove
MY LITTLE DOVE
Anonymous-
She thinks she slipped away quietly. Seventeen heartbeats later, she’s out of sight—but never out of reach. She has no idea how loud she is. Every step, every breath, every little hesitation echoes like a gunshot to someone who was shaped to listen.
I watched the whole thing from thirty yards through my scope—watched her doubt, watched her decide.
She tries and fails miserably at covering her tracks. Thank God I’m not a bear, or she’d already be mauled.
I pack up my things and follow as she veers toward the road—my clever little dove.
A stag snaps a fallen branch, and she whips around, her eyes wide, searching the darkness for whatever made the sound. She crouches behind a tree like it’s not painfully obvious where she is. I could shatter the illusion of safety with one breath, but she needs a savior, not a hunter.
I pluck a strand of her hair from the branch she just ran past and twirl it around my finger; it still smells like her rosehip shampoo, although it now carries the scent of cloves as well.
I missed her last night. If it weren’t for the tracker I slipped beneath her car a year ago, things would’ve gotten messy when she wasn’t in her bed like she was supposed to be. She’s been unpredictable lately. I don’t like that, not when I’ve worked so hard to keep everything safe for her.
I’ve had these horrible nightmares about her falling for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why, but I wake up screaming her name. So I will continue to monitor everything she does to ensure she never falls again.
Lumi doesn’t realize what kind of place she wandered into out here. How dangerous it is when I don’t know where she is—I have so much to teach her.
She thinks she’s sneaky, but I’ve watched her through four years of vanishing acts. Everything she’s been through, and she still doesn’t understand how easily the world can reach inside and take from her. That’s why she needs me.
She stumbles her way through the dark. I bite the glove off my hand, letting the cold bite against my knuckles as I draw my knife. She brushed this tree when she tripped. I saw it—now he’ll see it too.
I press the blade to the bark, just enough for the sap to bleed. Mine. I carve the word exactly where her shoulder hit.
Let him scent her, and see that I was the one who came for her.
I always have.
I always will.
Andrik-
The moment I can no longer hear her breathing, I know she’s gone. There’s not a sound, a heartbeat, or a single pulse of warmth that lingers behind that door anymore.
My body moves before thought can follow. I lunge—claws splintering through wood as I rip the door from its hinges. Her scent rushes out like smoke from a dying fire, already fading.
“No.” The word slips out. “No!”
The cold inside me doesn’t fracture; it detonates, leaving nothing but wildfire blazing beneath my fur.
Floorboards groan beneath me before splitting under the sudden attack of my shifting form. My spine arches painfully, bones tear apart and reform with a sickly wet sound like branches snapping under the weight of heavy ice. My antlers jut higher, gouging the ceiling.
The cabin can’t hold what I’ve become, but I can’t stop it this time.
I don’t want to.
The forest answers the scream that ruptures from my throat. A storm ignites—icy wind slamming against the cabin, windows shuddering in their frames. Trees bow inward like spines cracking under a god’s command, snow churning into a cyclone.
I drop to all fours.
Her trail is a desperate map carved into the frozen earth. Every breath she took, every turn she made, all look panicked to me.
I slow for a breath, nostrils flaring, charting the woods as I run. I mark every creature as I pass—harmless, harmless, irrelevant.
But when I hone in on the air surrounding her footprints, the world goes mute. If something was chasing her, I should smell the vital heat of a human body, but the air is meticulously clean, besides the faint billowing of honeysuckle.
It isn’t that nothing’s here; it’s that something scrubbed the air clean.
The trail falters with a sudden confusion in her scent, as if she stumbled or paused.
I rear up on my haunches, and the loud sound sends the birds scattering through the finger-like branches.
My hackles rise before I can read what it says.
Directly ahead, carved shallowly into the pale bark of an old oak tree, is the word: M I N E.
The beast in me knows right away this isn’t a word, it’s a challenge.
The carving carries no scent of the hand that made it—only the faint memory of her fear when she brushed past.
A snarl tears through the canopy, no longer of sadness, but of absolute, consuming promise.
My antlers burn with the need to strike something. I lower them to the bark before I know what I’m doing.
Crack.
The tree shudders, but the word remains. I draw back, a deep, furious sound stirring in my chest, and slam into the trunk again.
The world fractures into the sound of splintering timber and deep, grinding earth.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
I don’t pause to feel the ache in my skull or the shock ricocheting down my spine. I ram into it until the bark falls away in chunks, and the pale heartwood screams under the impact. I will not yield my hunt to the arrogance of a predator who dares to mark my territory.
With a final, explosive thrust, the ancient oak groans its last breath and begins its slow, thundering fall. The trunk shatters against the earth with a deafening crash.
“She is mine,” I snarl into the freezing dark. “Thrak’vesk kai’lor?n, kaemorin ves’thai. Veyr’shal?n narh etra’kai.” (You dared touch what’s mine. There will be no body left for the grieving.)
Snow erupts outward in every direction as my words shake the forest.
“Give her back,” I roar into the sky. “If you take her from me, I will take everything you love.” I don't know if I’m threatening whoever took her... or the gods who dared give her to me just to see her taken.
Every broken branch and crushed blade of ice sings her name, and I follow them like a war cry.
Her scent is faint, nearly swallowed by the storm.
Branches slash across my shoulders, bark flays under my claws. The forest will part for me—or it will bleed.
Was she afraid of me? Is that why she left?
Of course she was. I am terrifying.
I shove the thought away, grinding the doubt back into fuel for the hunt.
The memory of her skin is all that guides me.
I think of the way she said my name like it belonged to her.
How the single sound of the word Velorin while she slept nearly undid me.
I would have stayed like that forever—her breath warming the shallow dipof my throat, her fingers gripping my fur.
But the beast doesn’t believe in sorrow; he only believes in consequence. If she cared, she wouldn’t have run.
A sound off in the distance stops me dead in my tracks.
A low grunt, undeniably male. It slithers through the trees.
My ears twitch toward the sound; it’s not far off, two hundred and fifty yards at most. I bound in that direction, the earth cracking beneath my paws.
Veyl?n thran’kar sael?n? (Where are you soulbond?)
“Get away from her!” The roar ripples through the trees like thunder, shaking snow from the tops.
If they touched her—if they so much as breathed close enough to graze a single hair on her head—
I can’t sense her pain, and that’s the only thing keeping me from going berserk. My eyes lock on the shadows between the trees, scanning, scenting, hunting. She’s still out here. I know it—I can feel her warmth flickering.
Thal?n help the veyrak’thar who thought they could take her. (Bastard.) They don’t understand what I am, or what I’ll do.
The scent of fresh blood hits my nose. A whisper of copper on the wind, but it’s enough to drive a spike straight through my chest. My jaw clenches so tight the bone cracks.
I drop my head and charge. Thrak’ven mar?k veyl?n.
Etravis?n narh kaelorin, I promise to myself.
(I will rip the soul from your bones. I will unmake you in her name.)
Lumi -
It’s so quiet, every little sound makes me jump.
I’ve been walking for so long that I’m too far to turn back, and not close enough to feel safe.
The road has disappeared in the darkness, and I’m realizing how big of a mistake I’ve made.
The trees no longer sway peacefully in the wind; they’re suddenly silent as if they’re hushing me in a language I don’t understand.
Something is wrong. It’s not just the guilt twisting my stomach; it’s the feeling in my gut that something is watching me.
I slow my steps to listen, but I hear nothing at all.
It’s the absence of sound that makes my skin itch.
I want to be back on Andrik’s couch, or back in my shitty apartment—anywhere but here.
I just want to feel safe for once in my life.
I start jogging in the direction I think the road is in, but I freeze when I hear someone whisper my name.
“Lumi.” It’s a whisper so close, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. It sounded like it was breathed right behind my ear. It didn’t sound like Andrik’s voice, but it was familiar.
How did I go from wanting to die to running for my life?
Maybe I just needed to know that someone out there would care if I died. Maybe that’s enough to live for. Andrik would care, I know he would. And Anna... Anna would want me to fight.
So I do.
I hear another noise—a horrifying, animalistic roar that should paralyze me, but instead, it calms every ounce of my fear.
I never thought I’d be grateful for a beast's fury, but there’s nothing else that could make me feel safer in this moment.
I finally catch my breath, and my heartbeat starts to even out.
“Andrik!” I call back. Please hear me. Please, please, please. “Andrik, I’m over here.”
I hear a final, terrible snarl—then something covers my mouth.