Elara’s POV

I barely remembered the walk home.

My sneakers carried me across the familiar dirt road, my body moving on autopilot, but my mind was still in the forest.

That man.

Those eyes.

That voice.

“The one thing you should fear the most.”

The words wouldn’t leave me alone, circling in my head like a song I hated but couldn’t stop humming.

And then there was the way the path had opened, as if the forest had let me go the moment he vanished.

It wasn’t normal. None of it was normal.

I should’ve been terrified, I told myself. And I was. My hands still shook, my pulse hadn’t calmed, and every rustle of leaves made me flinch. But fear wasn’t all I felt.

No. Beneath the panic, something else burned.

Recognition.

That was the part I couldn’t explain. How could you recognize someone you’d never met?

By the time I slipped quietly through the front door of my house, night had deepened. My mom’s light still glowed under her bedroom door, but I crept past, not wanting to face her—not yet. Not with questions I couldn’t even form into words.

In my room, I dropped onto the bed, hugging my pillow to my chest. The scent of the forest still clung to my clothes, sharp and wild.

I buried my face into the pillow, whispering into the darkness:

“Who was he?”

The silence didn’t answer, but deep down, I already knew.

Whoever he was… this wasn’t the last time I’d see him.

Kael’s pov

The forest was still restless when I returned to my quarters.

I’d left my warriors confused, my Beta suspicious, but I couldn’t explain—not even to myself—what had just happened.

I shut the door behind me, leaning against it as though I needed the wood to keep me upright. My chest still burned with the echo of her scent, the memory of her wide eyes.

That girl.

That human girl.

I raked a hand through my hair, pacing the room. It made no sense. She shouldn’t have been there. No humans ever crossed that boundary. Not without reason. Not without… calling.

And yet, she had.

I could still hear her heartbeat. Fragile, rapid, but strong in its own way. I could still see the way the moonlight had touched her skin.

Most of all, I could still feel the bond.

The cursed pull of it.

No. It wasn’t possible. Fate couldn’t be that cruel.

I had a duty. A pact sealed in blood. I was to marry Lyra, daughter of Alpha Darius, and bind two packs together in fragile peace.

But that girl…

The second I laid eyes on her, I knew.

She wasn’t just some human.

She was mine.

Elara’s POV

Sleep didn’t come easy. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. Those glowing eyes. That commanding stance. The way his voice had wrapped around me like iron chains.

But it wasn’t only fear that kept me awake. It was curiosity.

What did he mean by human?

The word had dripped from his mouth like it was an insult. Like I wasn’t supposed to be one.

I pulled the blanket tighter around me, staring up at the ceiling.

Mom knew something. She had to.

She always warned me about the woods. She always avoided questions about my father, about why we lived so close to the forest but never crossed its borders.

A cold thought struck me: what if she wasn’t warning me to protect me from the woods?

What if she was warning the woods to protect them from me?

The idea lodged in my chest like a thorn, impossible to pull out.

Kael’s POV

Ronan found me at dawn.

He didn’t knock. He never did. My Beta stormed into the room, eyes narrowed, arms crossed.

“You left again,” he said flatly. “What did you see?”

I growled low in my throat, warning him off. “Nothing.”

But Ronan didn’t back down. He never did. That was why he was my Beta. “You smelled of something. Not prey. Not enemy. Different.”

I clenched my fists. I couldn’t tell him the truth—not yet. Not until I understood it myself.

“Drop it,” I snapped.

His jaw tightened, but he bowed his head slightly, a show of respect if not agreement. “As you wish, Alpha. But secrets don’t stay secrets forever.”

When he left, I slammed a fist against the wall, cracking the wood.

Because he was right.

And if the others ever discovered what I felt toward that girl, the fragile truce I’d built with blood and sacrifice would shatter.

But still, I couldn’t push her out of my mind.

Her face. Her voice. That pull.

Fate had chosen her.

And Fate was a cruel, merciless thing.

Elara’s POV

By morning, the world looked normal again.

Sunlight spilled through my window, children’s laughter echoed from the street, and the bakery down the road filled the air with the scent of warm bread.

But inside me, nothing felt normal.

Every shadow still looked like it might hide amber eyes. Every sound made me turn my head.

And for the first time, I wondered if I belonged here at all.

That night, as I stood by my window staring toward the woods, the wind carried a sound so faint I thought I might’ve imagined it.

A howl.

Low. Powerful. Calling.

And deep inside me, something answered.

Something I couldn’t explain.

Something I couldn’t deny.