POV: Adeline
The footsteps behind me were too light to be a threat, but my wolf noticed them anyway.
I turned to find three small faces peering up at me from behind a woodpile. The tallest couldn't have been older than eight, her brown braids escaping their ties. The other two—a boy with grass-stained knees and a girl clutching a carved wooden wolf—watched me with the unguarded curiosity only children possessed.
"You're the one from the burned pack," the tallest said. Not cruel. Just honest in the way children were before adults taught them to soften truth.
"I am," I said.
They emerged fully from their hiding spot, forming a loose semicircle around me. The boy's eyes were wide, searching my face as if expecting to find scorch marks there.
"Is it true the bad wolves are coming here?" he asked.
The question landed like a fist beneath my ribs.
"Who told you that?"
"Nobody." The girl with the carved wolf hugged it tighter against her chest. "But everyone's been whispering. The grown-ups think we don't hear, but we do. They said you came from where the bad wolves burned everything."
Their fear was so innocent. So pure. They didn't know about ritual patterns in bone or symbols scorched into earth. They only knew that something dark had touched their borders, and the adults who usually made the world safe had started speaking in hushed voices.
I knew that fear. I had lived inside it for months.
Say something, my wolf urged. They need comfort.
But what comfort could I offer? What if I said the wrong thing—promised safety I couldn't guarantee, or let slip some detail that would seed nightmares for weeks? What if my presence alone was enough to terrify them, this stranger who smelled of ash and carried destruction in her wake?
My throat tightened. Words tangled behind my teeth.
"There you are."
Freya's voice cut through the paralysis like sunlight through storm clouds. She appeared at my shoulder, her presence warm and unhurried, and immediately crouched to the children's level.
"You three are supposed to be helping Maren sort kindling," she said, her tone gently scolding. "She's going to think you've been eaten by squirrels."
"Squirrels don't eat wolves," the boy protested.
"Giant squirrels might. You don't know. Now scoot—and tell Maren I'll bring extra honeycakes to the fire tonight if she doesn't complain about your disappearing act."
The promise of honeycakes worked its magic. The children scattered with the quick resilience of youth, their fear already fading beneath the pull of sugar and evening fires.
Freya straightened and gave me a knowing look. "You had that cornered-deer expression. Figured you could use an escape route."
"I didn't know what to say to them."
"Nobody does. That's why we bribe them with food and hope they forget to be scared." She looped her arm through mine with easy familiarity. "Come on. Communal fire's starting. You look like you could use something warm that isn't panic."
She guided me toward the clearing at the compound's heart, where pack members were already gathering around a broad fire pit. The flames crackled with comfortable rhythm, casting dancing shadows across faces I was beginning to recognize. Someone had brought out drums. A few wolves sat close together, voices rising in low harmony.
But my attention snagged on a figure seated apart from the others.
She sat on a carved wooden bench near the fire's edge, close enough to catch its warmth but removed from the cluster of conversation. Silver-streaked black hair fell past her shoulders in waves that caught the firelight. Her face was lined with age and something else—something that spoke of distances traveled inward rather than outward. And her eyes, when they lifted to meet mine across the flames, were pale grey. Nearly colorless. Like morning mist before the sun burned through.
She watched me with a stillness that made my wolf go quiet.
"Who is that?" I murmured to Freya.
"Elara. Pack elder. She keeps to herself mostly—comes to fires but rarely speaks. Some say she sees things." Freya's voice dropped. "Others say she remembers too much."
Before I could ask what that meant, a small body collided with my legs.
I looked down to find a pup—younger than the others, perhaps five or six—staring up at me with enormous dark eyes. She had wedged herself against my knee as if seeking shelter there, her small fingers gripping the fabric of my trousers.
"Nadia," someone called. "Nadia, leave the guest alone."
But Nadia didn't move. She simply looked at me with that solemn intensity children sometimes had, as if she could see straight through skin and bone to whatever lay beneath.
"You're sad," she said quietly. "Like me when I miss my mama."
The words cracked something open in my chest.
Because I knew this child. Not her specifically—but her. The shape of her face, the darkness of her eyes, the way she sought comfort from a stranger because the ache inside was too large to carry alone. I knew her because I had seen her before, in another compound, in another life. A little girl named Sera who used to follow me through Ash Hollow's gardens, asking me to name the flowers. Sera, who had been too young to run fast enough when the flames came.
My throat closed completely.
I knelt slowly, bringing myself to Nadia's level. My hand shook as I reached out to brush a strand of hair from her face.
"I am sad sometimes," I admitted, and my voice came out rough. "But being here helps. Being around people who care."
Nadia considered this with the gravity of a much older soul. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied, and allowed herself to be collected by an apologetic older sibling who whisked her toward the other children.
I stayed kneeling for a moment longer than necessary, trying to remember how to breathe around the knot in my chest.
When I finally rose, the crowd around the fire had shifted. Conversations continued, drums still pulsed their gentle rhythm, but someone had moved closer.
Elara stood before me.
Up close, her grey eyes held depths I hadn't expected—not empty, but full. Full of something I couldn't name, something that looked almost like recognition.
"You carry more than one ghost," she said.
Her voice was soft. Fragmented. As if the words came from very far away and lost pieces of themselves on the journey.
"I don't—" I started.
"Come see me when you're ready." She didn't touch me, but I felt the weight of her attention like a hand pressed to my heart. "The fire remembers what the ashes cannot speak."
Then she turned and drifted back toward her bench, leaving me standing in the shifting firelight with my pulse loud in my ears and my wolf shivering beneath my skin.
What does she know? How does she know?
I had no answers. Only the crawling sensation that something in Willow Ridge saw more of me than I had chosen to reveal.
The drums faded. Conversations softened as pack members began drifting toward their homes. I stood apart from the dispersing crowd, still trying to settle the tremor in my hands, when I felt the weight of a gaze I was learning to recognize.
Aiden stood across the dying fire.
He wasn't watching the flames or the departing wolves. He was watching me—had been watching, I realized, for longer than I'd noticed. His face held an expression I couldn't quite read. Something raw beneath the steadiness. Something that looked almost wrecked.
Tenderness. That was the word. Wrecked with tenderness, as if seeing me kneel before that child had undone something he usually kept locked away.
Our eyes held across the embers.
He didn't speak. Didn't cross to me or offer words of comfort. Instead, he inclined his head toward the tree line—a question asked in silence.
Come with me. Walk the borders. Let me give you something other than ghosts to carry.
I should have said no. Should have retreated to my room and the locked door I had requested, buried myself in solitude until the trembling stopped.
Instead, I nodded.
And when Aiden turned toward the forest's edge, I followed.