Chapter 6 TEETH AND MERCY

The growl didn't just sound-it vibrated up through the frozen ground, through the marrow of my broken ribs, and settled in that cavernous silence where my wolf used to be.

This is it, I thought with a strange, distant clarity. Not by Vivian's hand, but by nature's own.

A cleaner death, maybe.

I waited for the teeth.

They didn't come.

A puff of warmth hit my face. It carried the scent of wet pine and cold stone, and beneath that, something so deeply wild it made my human senses prickle.

My eyes, heavy as stones, dragged open. The wolf's muzzle was so close I could see the individual whiskers, stark against the dark fur.

Its teeth were terrifying-long, ivory daggers glinting in the moonlight.

But they weren't bared. Its mouth was just...

open, as if it had caught a scent on the air and was holding it. And its eyes... My breath hitched. They weren't animal eyes.

Not really.

They were silver. Not the flat grey of a storm cloud, but a luminous, liquid mercury, swirling with an intelligence that felt older than the trees.

It was looking at me, not just seeing me. The fear inside me, a constant, screaming companion all night, stuttered.

This was different. It sniffed. A deep, rumbling inhale that traveled from my forehead, over the salt-tracks of my tears, down the column of my bruised throat, and finally to the horrific, weeping mess of my stomach.

I braced for pain, for a probing nose to send fresh lightning through my nerves. Its nose, cold and damp, only feathered against the edge of the wound.

A touch so gentle it was worse than a blow. It broke something in me. A low, soft whine vibrated from its chest.

It wasn't a growl. It sounded like... sorrow. Why?

The question formed in my shattered mind.

Why does a monster sound sorry? It pulled back, those impossible eyes searching my face.

Then, with a grace that belied its enormous size, it lay down.

The ground seemed to accept its weight with a sigh. It settled its massive body along the length of my shivering side, its heat an immediate, shocking blanket against the chill leaching my life away.

It rested its great head on its paws, watching me. A guardian. A silent, wild guardian.

Tears, hot and sudden, welled up again, blurring the moon. I didn't understand. Was this kindness?

Or just a predator ensuring its meal didn't spoil? The warmth was real. The solid presence was real. For the first time since I'd dragged myself from the blood-stained grass, I wasn't alone.

The thought was so profoundly heartbreaking I almost wished it would just bite me and be done with it.

A spasm tore through my abdomen, a fresh eruption of fire. A choked whimper escaped my cracked lips.

The wolf's ear flicked. In one fluid motion, it was up. The loss of its warmth was instant and brutal. The cold rushed into the space it left, colder than before.

No.

The desperate, childish thought came unbidden. Don't go. It didn't look back. It simply turned and vanished between the trees, its black fur swallowing the shadows whole.

The loneliness that followed was a physical weight, crushing what was left of my spirit. Of course. Of course it left. Everything leaves. Everyone leaves.

The warmth had been a taunt. A final joke from a cruel universe. I was alone in the dirt, just as Vivian intended.

The fight drained from me, replaced by a vast, weary acceptance.

The dark tunnel calling me didn't seem so bad now. It was quiet there. No pain. No betrayal. Just... nothing.

I let myself sink into it. The sounds of the forest faded-the chuckle of the stream, the sigh of the wind. There was only the shallow, ragged sound of my own breathing, growing fainter. Then, a new sound. Not paws.

Footsteps.

Heavy.

Deliberate.

Crunching through the frost-kissed leaves with a purpose that spoke of two legs, not four. She came back. The thought was flat, empty. She came to watch the light leave my eyes. To make sure.

A final, bitter triumph. I couldn't even muster the energy to be afraid anymore. Let her watch. Let her see her victory. I hoped it tasted like ashes.

A shadow fell over me, blotting out the moon's cold face. I looked up, ready for her gloating smile. It wasn't Vivian.

A man stood there. The moon silhouetted him, making him seem like a piece of the night given shape-tall, shoulders impossibly broad. As my vision adjusted, I saw his eyes first. Silver. Liquid, living silver.

My heart gave a single, painful thud against my ruined ribs. He knelt. No hesitation. No revulsion at the blood, the dirt, the broken thing I'd become.

His gaze was intense, sweeping over me with a focus that felt more intimate than a touch. He saw everything-the wound, the bruises, the story of my desperate crawl written in mud and gore.

"The wolf..." I whispered, the words a raw scrape in my throat.

A question.

A plea for an anchor in this madness. His eyes met mine. "Is me." Two words. Simple. Absolute. They should have terrified me. A myth made flesh, kneeling in my dying place.

A Shifter.

The old tales whispered around dying campfires-beings of ancient magic, older than packs, older than laws. Wild gods who wore the skins of true beasts. But all I felt was a staggering sense of relief.

The wolf hadn't abandoned me. It had... changed. It had come back. He reached out. Instinctively, I flinched, a feeble tremble. "Be still." His voice was low, a rumble that wasn't quite sound but a feeling in the chest.

It held an authority that wasn't harsh, but natural, like the command of a mountain or a deep river. My body, against all expectation, stilled. His hands hovered over the devastating wound on my stomach.

He didn't touch it. A warmth, visible as a gentle shimmer in the air, radiated from his palms. It wasn't magic as I knew it-no pack magic, no lunar energy. This was something earthier, deeper.

The agony, that white-hot core of suffering, didn't vanish, but it... muted. It softened at the edges, becoming a heavy, throbbing ache I could almost breathe through. He hadn't healed me. He had given me a respite.

A ledge to cling to before the final fall. Then his attention turned inward. I felt it-a profound, searching focus that seemed to pierce through my skin and bone, right into the hollow, screaming void where my wolf had lived.

His silver eyes swirled, darkening. A flicker of something passed over his stern features-not pity, but a fierce, cold recognition.

An understanding of the violation. "Who did this?" he asked. The question was quiet, but it hung in the air between us, charged and dangerous.

I tried to speak, to form Vivian's name, but my voice was gone.

All I could do was let my gaze drift weakly toward the direction of the house, of the life that was now ashes. He followed my look. His head lifted, scenting the wind.

I saw his jaw tighten, the line of it hardening like granite. He was smelling the remnants of my nightmare-the smoke, the perfume, the cruelty.

"A hollowing,"

he said, the word a soft, venomous curse. He looked back at me, and his gaze was no longer just assessing. It was resolved. "They did not just kill your wolf.

They murdered a part of your soul." He shifted then, and before I could process it, his arms slid beneath me. I cried out as the movement sent a fresh spike of brightness through my side, but his grip was firm, sure, immobilizing the worst of the damage.

He lifted me as if I were no heavier than a child, cradling me against a chest that felt as solid and unyielding as the ancient forest around us. "I am Kael," he said, his voice a vibration against my ear. "And you are not going to die tonight in this stream.

" He began to walk, carrying me away from the water, away from the trail of my own life's blood, moving with a ground-eating stride into the deeper, older woods where the shadows gathered thick and secret.

"Where...?" I breathed into the dark fabric of his shirt. He looked down at me.

In the dappled moonlight, his silver eyes held a universe of shadow and stark, untamed truth. "To a place where the air does not taste of your pain." As the trees closed in behind us, I let my head rest against him.

The steady, powerful rhythm of his heart was a new drumbeat against my ear, foreign and alive.

It wasn't the sound of an ending. It was the first, deep, resonant note of an unknown beginning.

And for the first time since the Moonblade fell, the silence within me didn't feel quite so empty. It felt... waiting.