The dream always starts with the sound of my name.
"Amelia."
It’s not a voice, not exactly. It’s a rumble in the dark, low and intimate, like the forest itself is breathing against my ear. The trees crowd in, black trunks and silvered needles, and the moon is a blade caught high above, reflected in eyes I can’t quite see.
Then he steps out of the shadows.
Silver fur, darker along the spine. Broad shoulders, the massive head of a predator that should terrify me. Instead, my chest loosens like it has been clenched for years and only now remembers how to open.
He pads closer. Snow that wasn’t there a moment ago crunches under his paws. Pine and cold air and something warmer, something that smells like home, wrap around me. The forest hushes. The only sound is his breath and my heart kicking hard enough that it hurts.
He reaches me, towering, muzzle a whisper from my throat. I should run. I should scream. I do what I always do.
I lean in.
"Amelia," the rumble says again, deeper, closer, inside my bones. My name slides over me like a hand down my spine.
Heat spikes low in my belly. Shame snaps at its heels. This is not normal. This is not—
Teeth graze the hollow of my neck. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to claim.
I jolt awake with a strangled sound, fingers clutching at my own throat.
Darkness presses against the bedroom windows of my little house. The red numbers on my alarm clock insist it’s 3:17 a.m. My skin is damp, my T-shirt twisted around me. The room smells like old wood and detergent and—
Pine.
I sit up too fast, the world lurching. No. No. Not again.
The scent is faint but unmistakable, threaded with the cold bite of night air. My bedroom window is closed like always, the warped sash painted shut long before I bought this place. My sheets are warm from my body, not chilled from any draft.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until colors spark. It’s in your head. You are thirty years old, you’ve been having this same damn dream since you were ten, and you know how this goes. You get up, you drink water, you breathe until your lungs stop hitching like you just ran uphill.
You do not walk toward the darkness.
I throw the covers off anyway.
The floorboards are cold under my feet as I cross to the front of the house. The old cedar walls creak with the night settling, the way they always have, but every pop sounds like a footstep just out of sight. I tell myself it’s fine, it’s stupid, but my hand still shakes when I flip on the porch light.
The bulb hums to life, washing the small porch in yellow. The mountain air stares back at me through the window glass, black and endless. Nothing moves.
Still, the smell of pine is stronger by the door. Fresher.
"Don’t," I whisper, but I’m not sure if I mean the door or myself.
The lock turns with a quiet click. The metal of the knob is icy against my palm. I crack the door open and the cold floods in, swallowing the leftover warmth of my bed, scraping over my bare arms until goosebumps rise.
