The first thing I taste is dirt.
It’s in my mouth, grainy and metallic, clinging to my tongue like I’ve been kissing the forest floor. Cold seeps through my dress, up my spine. Crickets scream in the dark, and something big moves in the underbrush to my left.
I jolt upright.
Pain lances through my palms. I gasp and look down.
Four red furrows rake across each hand, exactly parallel, already crusting at the edges. Claw marks. Not shallow scratches from branches—too clean, too deliberate.
Where am I?
The trees press in, tall and black against a bruised sky. Moonlight filters through the leaves, silver and thin, painting everything in ghost colors. My breath clouds in the air. It shouldn’t be this cold; it’s August. My birthday. Twenty‑one.
I was at The Quarry—music, lights, Caleb shoving a cupcake in my face. I remember his laugh, the way he yelled "Shots for the birthday menace!" I remember Elena’s text: Don’t stay out late. Forest is bad this week.
Then—
Nothing.
My head throbs when I try to push the memories harder, like slamming into a wall I can’t see.
"Easy."
The voice comes from the darkness ahead, low and steady. Everything inside me snaps tight. My heart kicks hard enough to hurt.
There’s a man leaning against a tree, half in shadow, like he’s been there the whole time, just watching.
Moonlight finds his face first—cut cheekbones, a straight nose with a slight bump, a mouth set in a line that looks more like discipline than calm. He’s tall, broad, wearing dark jeans and a Henley that clings to his shoulders. Barefoot. No sound when he shifts his weight, like the ground’s learned to get out of his way.
His eyes, though. His eyes pin me in place—pale, almost silver, catching the moon like mirrors. Wolf eyes. My breath tangles in my throat. I’ve seen those eyes in a hundred stupid campfire retellings, watched the way kids lean in, pretending they don’t believe.
Raiden Wolfcrest, the exiled alpha who traded his pack for a ghost in the woods.
"Stay back," I manage. My voice comes out raw.
He doesn’t move closer, but somehow the space between us feels smaller anyway. The air around him is heavier, like gravity likes him best.
"You’re bleeding," he says, gaze flicking to my hands, then back up. "You shouldn’t move until you can stand properly. The forest isn’t done shifting yet."
The forest isn’t… what?
My pulse roars in my ears. "Who are you?" I whisper, even though I already know. Not from logic or stories. From somewhere deeper, buried where the pain in my skull is thickest.
A muscle ticks in his jaw. He straightens, stepping out of the shadows. The silver mark on his throat catches the moon—a crescent intertwined with jagged lines, like roots or claws. It pulses faintly, as if catching the same rhythm as my heart.
"Raiden," he says quietly. "Raiden Wolfcrest."
The name scrapes through me. Ghost story. Warning. The boogeyman parents invoked when their kids snuck too close to the tree line.
"No," I say automatically. "You’re… you’re a myth."
One corner of his mouth twitches, not quite a smile. "I’ve been called worse."
I notice then that I’m shoeless too. My cheap black heels are gone, toes numb against the cold dirt, hem of my dress torn. There are burrs caught in the fabric, a smear of dark on my thigh. I don’t want to know if it’s my blood.
