Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FERAL
The compound had gone quiet by the time we finished dinner. Most of the pack had already retreated to their trees, leaving the clearing to the night sounds and the orange glow of bioluminescent fungi climbing the bark in lazy spirals.
I took Victoria’s hand. “Walk with me before we go up.”
She glanced at our joined hands, then at my face. A small smile played at the corner of her mouth. “Checking the perimeter?”
“Something like that.”
The truth was I wanted more time with her before we climbed the hundred and four steps and whatever happened next. The evening had been good, the kind of good I hadn’t known I was capable of until she’d arrived and made it look simple.
We moved along the edge of the clearing, our boots soft on the forest floor still damp from an afternoon rain. Acorn scooted ahead before turning back, waiting for us to catch up.
The canopy filtered moonlight into silver patches across the ground, turning everything otherworldly.
Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, low and mournful, answered by another further off.
The air smelled rich, like turned earth and growing things and that particular scent of night in the forest I’d never found words for.
Victoria’s hand warmed mine. She didn’t pull away or make it awkward. Just walked beside me like this was something we did. Like we’d been doing it for years instead of only weeks.
Maybe we had been, in a way. It just took us a while to notice.
She stopped, her attention caught by something on a nearby trunk. I recognized the look. Her notebook appeared from her pocket before I could comment. The pen lifted, hovering at the ready.
“Luminescent moss,” she said, leaning closer without letting go of my hand. “The growth pattern suggests seasonal variation in light output. Probable correlation with temperature fluctuation and ambient magical saturation. If I could isolate the—”
Stopping, she tucked the notebook away. Her face colored.
I kept hold of her hand and traced my thumb across her knuckles.
She looked up at me, searching for judgment she wouldn’t find.
“You were saying something about ambient magical saturation?” I said.
“It’s not important.”
“It is if you think it is.”
She studied my face for a moment. “You don’t find my constant documentation annoying?”
“I find it very you.” I kept my thumb moving across her skin. “Which means I don’t find it annoying at all.”
Her expression softened. She didn’t pull her notebook back out, but the tension in her shoulders eased.
Acorn scampered closer, his tail high and bushy. He chittered something that made Victoria’s mouth twitch.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“That wolves and witches wandering under stars should know the forest sees everything and tells no tales.” She paused, amusement flickering across her face. “He’s feeling poetic tonight.”
“The forest can mind its own business.”
She laughed softly. “I’ll be sure to pass that along.”
We walked further, past the main residences toward the older section of the compound.
The trees here were massive, their trunks wide enough that it took twenty grown wolves standing fingertip to fingertip to circle them.
Lights glowed in carved windows high above.
Pack members settling in for the night. My pack. Safe and home.
For now.
I shoved the thought away and focused on Victoria’s hand in mine. She studied the forest like she was cataloging it and appreciating it at the same time. A loose strand of hair had come free again. I’d started looking for it, this small detail that belonged to her and no one else.
I stopped walking and reached for it, tucking it behind her ear. My fingers lingered on her jaw, tracing the line of it. Her skin was soft and warm under my touch.
She looked up at me, though neither of us spoke.
The moment stretched, filled with all the things we’d been learning to say to each other without words.
This had stopped being temporary somewhere along the way.
Her eyes reflected the orange glow of the fungi.
She was so damn beautiful it made my chest ache.
Footsteps broke through the quiet.
The rhythm was off in a way that made my wolf surge forward, alert and tracking.
My hand tightened on Victoria’s as Kirk emerged from the tree line. His face told me everything before he opened his mouth. In thirteen years, I’d never seen him like this. Kirk didn’t get afraid. He got angry or determined or coldly efficient, but I’d never seen fear on his face until now.
“Alpha.” His voice came out steady, but his scent gave him away. Sweat with something sharp underneath. Panic, barely controlled. “I… It’s horrible.”
“What happened?”
He looked at Victoria, then back at me. He’d never hesitated with me before.
“Just say it,” I said, keeping my voice level.
“I was on patrol in the northern route, and I felt it again. That hollow feeling we’ve been talking about.” He paused, his jaw working. “But it went further this time.”
Cold spread through my chest, as inevitable as winter.
“Describe it,” I said.
Kirk’s hands flexed at his sides. “It was like reaching for my wolf and finding the connection there but muffled. Distant.” He swallowed hard. “Then it changed. It wasn’t muffled anymore. It felt un-anchoring, like the wolf part of me was detaching from my soul instead of just being blocked.”
Victoria stepped forward, her notebook already out, her pen hovering. Her face had shifted into that focused expression I recognized.
“When did it start?” she asked.
“An hour ago.”
“And what was the specific location?”
“Near the eastern seal site. The one by the old oak grove.”
“How long did it last?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.” He looked at his hands like they belonged to someone else. “It eased when I moved away from the site, but it hasn’t gone completely. I can still feel it. Something that should be tight inside me is loose.”
Acorn had gone absolutely still on the ground beside Victoria.
She tilted her head, listening to something I couldn’t hear.
The silence stretched.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“Acorn says when anchors fail and old roots break loose from the deep ground, the soul drifts around.” She met my eyes. “He’s not usually this serious.”
No. He wasn’t. And that made it worse.
If it could reach Kirk, it could reach anyone. He was my best guard, one of the strongest wolves in the pack. I trusted this male with my life and my territory and everything in between. If Kirk was vulnerable, none of us were safe.
“We’re taking you to the healers,” I said. “Now.”
I was already moving, Victoria’s hand still in mine. Kirk fell into step beside us.
My mind raced through possibilities, discarding most of them as quickly as they formed. None of the patterns held. None of the theories fit. This was something new or something we’d missed entirely.
Either way, we were running out of time.
The healer’s area occupied the third floor of a smaller residence tree near the eastern edge. We climbed in silence, our footsteps echoing off the carved wood. Victoria kept pace beside me without complaint. Kirk’s breathing came heavier than it should behind us.
We stepped inside, and Francine rose from her desk near the far-right wall. She was one of the oldest wolves in the pack. Her hands could set broken bones, and her eyes missed nothing. She took one look at Kirk’s face and gestured us inside.
I quickly explained as she led Kirk over to one of the beds, tugging a curtain closed between his bed and the empty one beside it.
He laid down, and her examination took a long time. Francine asked questions in her calm voice while her hands moved over Kirk’s chest and throat and temples. Testing reflexes. Checking responses. Building a picture I couldn’t see yet but knew I wouldn’t like.
Victoria stood beside me, her pen moving across a notebook page in quick, careful strokes, recording everything. I was grateful for her presence even as my wolf paced and snarled inside me, demanding action I couldn’t take yet.
Finally Francine stepped back. “His wolf is present but destabilized. It’s not blocked the way the earlier cases were. The connection is there, but it’s fraying. Picture a rope coming apart strand by strand.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked.
“I can stabilize him for now. I’ll do my best to keep the fraying from getting worse. But I can’t repair what’s already damaged. That’s beyond my skill.”
The words hit like a gut punch, but I kept my face neutral and my voice steady. “Do what you can.”
I turned to Kirk while Francine left to prepare her treatment. He met my eyes and I saw the question there, the one he was too disciplined to ask but needed to hear answered anyway.
“We’ll solve this,” I said. “You have my word.”
He nodded. He believed me because he had to. Because I was alpha and that’s what alphas did. We made promises we didn’t know how to keep and then figured it out anyway. I just hoped I could keep this one.
When we left, we found the corridor outside the healer’s room dark except for the faint glow of fungi along the walls. Victoria took my hand in the shadows. I looked down at our joined fingers and didn’t say anything, because what I felt didn’t have words yet.
“Acorn’s rhyme has been bothering me since he said it,” she said.
“Tell me again.”
“When anchors fail and old roots break loose from the deep ground, the soul drifts around.” Her face took on a serious slant.
Acorn, sitting on the floor beside her, studied us both.
She lifted him and tucked him against her throat, holding him close. “What if that’s exactly what this is? Not a sickness or a curse, but something that’s supposed to anchor us coming loose.”
“The seals,” I said.
“Maybe. Or something connected to them.”
We walked back to our tree in silence, both of us turning it over.
By the time we reached the suite, I’d already started building the framework, connecting pieces that had seemed separate until now.