Page 20 of Wolf's Reckoning
I took a deep inhale. There was no space for grief, not with the demand of duty clawing under my skin. I needed to shift. Run. Breathe.
I needed to shed this skin of human emotion and let my wolf breathe. I shed my clothes, the tightness in my skin urging me to be faster, and then I let the change take over.
The shift took me hard. It always did when I was too wound up. The shift between forms was fluid, but I feltevery crack of bone as my body reshaped into a form that was fire and instinct. I shook my head, my vision sharpening, the color draining to something older, purer. My wolf pawed the ground, silent and fierce, claws buried deep in the earth.
The forest was no longer a place I walked through. It was a place I belonged.
I ran.
Not for distance. Not for speed. Just tofeelit.
Leaves and low branches tore past me. Bark scratched my flank. My breath came fast and harsh, visible in clouds beneath the canopy as I raced down the ridge path and leapt across the streambed like I had when I was twelve, when the world was simpler and everything still felt possible.
The wind rushed through my fur, and for a moment, I felt weightless. Free of everything.
I didn’t stop until my legs began to burn, until the tremble set in from the inside out. Then I slowed. Padded to a stop beneath an old hemlock tree. The air was still. The world was quiet.
Something shifted.
Not in me.
Not in the forest around me.
In the Hollow.
I could feel it.
Something was coming.
Chapter 6
Wolfe
The Hollow didn’t welcomeme.
It felt like it never had. Not truly.
The air grew heavier the deeper we traveled, the trees watching as we passed beneath their boughs. Judging. Maybe remembering.
I kept my head high, spine straight, as my paws sank into the ground I’d once called home. Killian’s brown-furred wolf was at my side, as silent as the woods.
We’d taken our time to get here. I didn’t want to look too eager, and I had stopped and met with another pack on our way. Killian had said nothing, which in itself was a miracle, one that I thanked the Goddess for.
We didn’t speak as we crossed into pack territory. There wasn’t much to say. I thought back over the last few days. The Council’s summons had been clear enough; representatives from Stonefang Pack were expected to arrive for negotiations. A “new alliance,” they called it. Mutually beneficial.
Politically expedient.
What they meant was to bring the new alpha to the PackCouncil for assessment of his weaknesses. What they didn’t mean was to take a look at the potential dumbass with the right bloodline to take Rowen as their wife.
I could still hear their whispers. Their boasts.Make her compliant.Tameher.
Fuck that.
My wolf sniffed the air, and I felt my ire rise higher. I hadn’t wanted to come back. Not to this place. Nor to the ghosts I’d buried here. But hearing them talk about her in that tent—hearing their boasts tossed around so carelessly—flipped a switch I hadn’t realized was still inside me.
Rowen. Daughter of the Hollow.
The girl who had turned away from me without blinking. The one whose words had sliced me like a blade between my ribs, so deep it still felt like I carried the scars.
