I spotted him by accident.
A flicker of red between the trees, low and deliberate. I should have turned away, but the game had gone on too long, and I was drunk on the small victories I had snatched from him.
So like a fool, I followed.
He hadnât noticed me. Not once. Not as I crept behind, my feet light, my breath held, careful to keep myself downwind. He thought himself clever, prowling with that slow, patient menace of his, but I was cleverer still.
The truth assaulted me with every step. He stank. Gods above, he reeked like rot and blood and swamp filth all boiled into one, sharp enough to sear the back of my throat. Even downwind, the foulness wrapped around me until my stomach lurched and I gagged into my sleeve. He was unbearable, disgustingâmy wolf undone by the very stink of himself.
I grinned through my sleeve, choking back laughter and bile together. What predator could stalk anything with such a stench dragging behind him? The deer ahead was doomed long before his claws touched it, not by his strength, but by his reek.
Still, I couldnât deny the sight of him. Shoulders rippling under that blood-red hide, golden eyes locked like arrows on the deer. He moved with the care of a predator carved from patience. His breath stilled, his body sank low. He was ready to spring.
So was I.
I raised my bow, smirk tugging at my lips, the triumph already hot in my chest.
The arrow hissed and struck clean, driving through the deerâs heart. The beast collapsed in an instant, dead before his claws could taste it.
I grinned wide, triumphant and wicked. Bested you again, wolf. What now?
Then his eyes found me.
Golden. Burning. Furious.
The grin froze on my face, then broke apart. My heart stumbled hard in my chest, as if trying to flee without me.
The air changed. It thickened, weighted, pressing against my ribs. The clearing was suddenly too small, the trees too close, the night too silent. Every bit of giddy triumph drained out of me, leaving only cold dread.
This was not a game anymore. Not tricks, not pranks, not clever little barbs. I had his full attention now, and it was a terrible, crushing thing. His gaze pinned me as surely as if his claws had already closed around my throat.
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My smirk shriveled into something fragile, useless. The laughter I had been biting back turned to stone in my mouth. I could not move. Could not breathe. The forest seemed to lean away from us both, afraid to be caught in what was about to happen.
He would come for meâI knew it. Tear me limb from limb, piece by piece, until I was nothing but scraps in the dirt. I had forgotten what I was playing with, and now the truth of it loomed larger than anything I could deny: a Fenrathi male, furious and unbound.
And he was looking at me.
And then he lunged.
Not at me. At the deer.
The sound of it hollowed me out.
Bones cracked like thunder under his jaws, splintering sharp, sickening, until I swore I felt the breaks echo in my own spine. Hide ripped away in long, wet sheets, tearing loose with a noise that turned my stomach. Flesh came apart in ragged hunks beneath his teeth, shredded and flung aside as though he wanted the earth itself to choke on it.
He wasnât killing. He was unmaking.
He ruined the deer piece by piece, scattering it across the clearing in a frenzy so violent it was obscene. Every bite landed like a blow struck against me, every claw-rake another lash across my pride. Blood sprayed the ground in arcs, the carcass reduced to pulp and gore, unfit even for the scavengers who would come after.
It was not hunger that drove him. It was fury. Pure, raw, merciless rage.
He killed to obliterate. To destroy. To punish.
By the end there was nothing left that could be called a deer. Only ruin â a heap of bloodied bones, meat ground into mud, the forest itself stained with his wrath.
And all of it, I knew, had been meant for me.
My grin was gone. My breath, too. My chest tightened until I thought my heart had simply stopped. Sweat broke over my skin, cold and slick, as his fury filled the clearing.
He was terrifying. Terrifying and strong. And so, so angry.
When at last he lifted his head, gore dripping from his muzzle, his chest heaving like a bellows, his eyes were no longer gold. They burned like fire, alive with a rage that made my stomach twist to water.
And he looked at me.
My knees buckled. I crumpled to the dirt, bow slack in my hands, trembling like a child. I had forgotten what I was playing with. Not a boy to tease. A Fenrathi male. Terrible, powerful, wrath sharpened into flesh. I had mocked him, insult after insult, needled him with barbs, and now I had seen what that fury truly was.
He could kill me. He should.
Instead, impossibly, he flung what remained of the deer to the earth, a ruin of bones and blood, and stalked off into the trees.
His growl rolled behind him like thunder, rattling through the forest long after his shadow vanished.
I stayed kneeling, shaking, waiting for my breath to return. It didnât. Not really.
When I finally staggered back to my camp, my knees trembled with each step, terror sour and sharp in my belly. My little hollow lay in ruins, stinking of mud and ash, but it was mine. I crawled into the sagging, vine and root-trapped shelter and curled tight, heart thrumming like a hunted thing.
The war had seemed a game.
It was not.
I had danced with a Fenrathi and now I was going to die.