Page 30 of Fated Wolf's Destiny

My wolf growls low, restless and frustrated, and I take a step back into the shadows. I can’t shake the thought that Bella is tied to us in ways neither she nor I even realize. It’s not just herfortitude, her connection to Arthur, or her damn stubbornness. There’s something deeper—something primal.

I can’t fail them. Any of them. A sound in the distance—soft, deliberate—snaps me back to the present. The faint crack of a branch, followed by silence. My body goes rigid, my senses sharpening.

The Crimson Claw has returned.

I let my wolf rise, the growl building low in my throat as I slip through the trees. The moonlight catches movement ahead—a shadow darting between the trunks, too fast and too large to be anything but one of them. My blood surges, the need to act pushing everything else aside. If they touch her, if they even come near her, they’ll regret it.

The chase is brief, the mutants scattering back into the wilderness as I close in. They’re not looking for a fight tonight—they’re still scouting, still testing the boundaries. With the mutants gone, I circle back to the clinic and Bella.

I stop at the edge of the forest, my breathing steady but my heart racing. The clinic is quiet now, the lights inside dimmed. Bella is safe, at least for the moment.

I lean against a tree, the rough bark brushing against my shirt, and stare out at the building. My wolf growls softly. The Crimson Claw isn’t just here for territory. They’re after something bigger, something darker. And it feels as if Bella is at the center of it. I can feel it in my bones, the way the forest feels before a thunderstorm.

CHAPTER 11

ISABELLA

Ilean over Arthur’s desk, his notes spread out before me. My coffee sits untouched, growing colder by the minute, but I can’t bring myself to care. The chemical compound from the dog’s blood sample is still flashing in my mind, a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit into any category I know.

The results I managed to pull from the analyzer aren’t like anything I’ve seen before. Whatever it is, it’s not natural—it’s manmade.

I tap my pen against the edge of the notebook, my mind racing. I’ve run through every possibility: contamination, a rare disease, even a mutation. But none of them make sense.

I flip through Arthur’s notes again, scanning for anything that might connect to this. A few of the same entries as before stand out—mentions of unusual injuries, scattered references to larger-than-normal pawprints—but nothing concrete. Then, buried near the back of the stack, I find a page that makes my breath catch.

Chemical compounds found in wildlife near Shadow Hollow. Traces of sedatives? Possibleconnection to poaching. Samples sent to lab for further analysis.

Poaching. But wouldn’t Arthur’s equipment detect a simple sedative? What was he looking for? I need to find any reports from things he sent out.

I think about the dog Lucas brought in, who I’ve named Blue. Injured, scared, with that strange compound in his blood. Could it be connected?

I sit back in the chair, twisting a strand of my hair around my finger. Illegal hunting isn’t unheard of in places like this, but if poachers are using chemicals on animals, it’s not just cruel, it’s calculated. And dangerous.

An hour later, I’m still at the desk, surrounded by Arthur’s chaos. I moved Blue out of the crate earlier in the day. He isn’t inclined to leave my side, and I find it comforting to have him close by. He’s sleeping soundly in the corner, his bandaged leg stretched out as he snores softly. I glance at him, the gravity of what all of this could mean becoming a weight almost impossible to bear.

Why didn’t Arthur tell me about any of this? Would I have believed him?

I push aside the page on poaching and grab another notebook. This one is older, its pages worn and smudged, as though Arthur spent hours thumbing through it.

As I flip through, I see more notes about wildlife injuries and unusual behavior. And then, halfway through, a phrase jumps out at me, scrawled in Arthur’s bold handwriting:

Wolf-human hybrids—not shifters but a created hybrid species.

I freeze, staring at the words.

What the hell does that mean? Isn’t that what a wolf-shifter is? A hybrid?

My pulse quickens as I scan the surrounding notes. Arthur’s handwriting is harder to read here, his usual neat script devolving into hurried scratches. But I manage to piece together enough to make my stomach churn.

Larger tracks than normal. Injuries consistent with wolf behavior, but...

Could some kind of hybrids exist? Not shifters, but somehow breeding a purebred wolf to a purebred human...

Mutant behavior patterns too deliberate, too organized. Their movements seem to be more militaristic than animalistic…

I slam the notebook shut, the sound echoing in the quiet room. My hands are shaking, my breath shallow as I stare at the cover. Wolf-human hybrids. Something different than wolf-shifters? More malevolent? No. It’s ridiculous. Impossible. Arthur must have been grasping at straws, trying to explain something he couldn’t make sense of.

But the word mutants creeps into my mind, uninvited. Lucas’s offhanded comment about mutants near the woods, Ryder’s concern every time he talks about keeping me out of the forest. The strange, deliberate behavior of the wolves Arthur documented.

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