Chapter One

He didn’t ask me for my name…he just looked at me from across the busy room and told me, ‘You’re mine,’ as if that was something he had carved in blood.”

I didn’t know then that there would be wolves in the room. That the blood he was talking about was real. By the time he said those words, I was already not running away.

Mara’s POV

I only have three rules when it comes to life.

Don’t ask for help. Don’t trust easily. And never, ever go into the woods behind the town of Coldridge after dark.

I broke all three in a single night.

I ended up stranded on Route 9 with a flat tire, no signal on my phone, and the kind of rain that doesn’t come down… it comes at you. My sister Lily had been texting me for twenty minutes before the bars plummeted. She was probably pacing the living room floor, biting her nails, like she always did when I was late.

I pulled the flashlight from the glove compartment, stepped out in the rain, and took the second worst decision of my life.

I went up to the trees to try and get a signal.

The first worst decision came about four minutes later when I didn’t turn back.

You couldn’t hear the road noise within the trees. One minute I was hearing rain pounding on the pavement, the next curtain of rain hammering down on the pavement, the pounding rain soon replaced by a silence that was so beautiful, so peaceful, so perfect.

I turned on my flashlight and made a faint pale small triangle in the dark. Branches dripped. Something far off snapped, probably an animal, I told myself. Probably small.

I told myself a lot of things that night.

I made a little ridge after more than ten minutes’ walk and held up my phone to see if there was a signal. One bar. Enough. I typed quickly to Lily

“Flat tire. Fine. Do not panic. Be back by midnight.”

I tapped send, the bar disappeared and I turned to make my way back to the road.

Then I smelled it. Actually, really felt it. The air changed. Something charged and electrified moved through the trees like a jolt before a lightning bolt. The hairs on my neck stood up so quickly it almost hurt.

I held my ground. A low sound came to me. Not quite a growl. Not quite human either. Somewhere tormentingly between.

“Move Mara.” My brain was yelling… “Move right now.”

My legs must have stopped getting signals from my brain.

Emerging from the shadows between two dark oaks was as if he simply materialized a person. Tall, impossibly tall. Broad shoulders that the black jacket stretched across as if it were losing an argument. Dark hair, waterlogged, stuck to a jaw that’s sharp enough to cut glass.

And his eyes….

His eyes made me stop dead in my tracks.

They were pale grey. “He is almost silver.” And their gaze was focused on me with such strength that it had physical presence — It felt like two hands pushing flat against my chest.

He didn’t take me. He didn’t threaten me. He just ‘looked’. And that was somehow worse.

“You’re bleeding,” he spoke in a low voice. Peacemeal. The kinda voice which doesn’t raise itself for anyone.

I blinked and look down. In my palm I must have caught it on a branch without realizing. A thin red line bisected the heel of my hand, darkened by the light of the flashlight.

“I’m fine,” I said on automatically. Three years of single-handedly holding my own life made those two words my go-to. I’m good. I’m on it. Don’t worry about me.

Something was moving across his face. Too fast to name.

“You should not be here,” he said.

“I know that.” I made one careful step back. “My car broke down on the way. I was just trying to get a signal. I’m leaving.”

He didn’t flinch. Did not move over or move forward. Just staring at me with those disturbing silver eyes, rain pouring down his face like he wasn’t feeling it. Like the weather was beneath his noticing.

“Which direction?” he inquired.

“I know the way.”

“You came from the east.” His voice didn’t change. “You’ve been drifting south for the last ten minutes. The road is that way.” He cocked his head slightly to the left.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. He was right. I could see the faint orange light shining in the darkness of the trees, a streetlight far away I hadn't noticed that I was walking farther.

I hated that he was right. “Thank you,” i said stiffly. I turned toward the glow.

“Stop.”

The word was not shouted. It dIdn’t really have to be. It came down like something from a great height and my feet, “those treacherous feet” stopped again.

I turned back slowly.

He had shifted. Just two steps away, but in the dark, it was as if the entire forest had closed in on us. So close I could sense the stress undulating through him… the clenched set of his jaw, the way his hands were exceptionally still at his sides, as if making them motionless required some sort of effort.

His nostrils flared up a little. That should have been odd. That should have me running.

Instead, some little place in my gut responded to it in a way I most assuredly was not going to look at.

“What’s your name?” he said. Quieter now.

I should have lied. I don’t know why I didn’t.

“Mara.”

Something else passed through his face. Deeper this time. A flicker of something that was almost pain and almost recognition, and I had no idea how both those things could be on a stranger’s face for two seconds.

“Mara.” He said my name like he was weighing it. Like it meant something he wasn’t ready to say out loud yet.

The quiet between us ballooned, stiff as a wire.

“I don’t know you,” I said, because one of us had to be the voice of reason.

“No,” he assented. “Not yet.”

Not yet. Not no. Not you’re right and sorry for being odd and goodnight. Just… not yet. Like the knowing was already decided and only the time was being worked out.

I drew a breath. Humid air, pine, rain, and something else under it all… something warm, dark and entirely alien that made my chest do a thing I didn’t have words for.

“I need to get going,” I said.

He stepped back. A full, deliberate step. Granting me the space, as if he knew exactly how much he’s taken from me already, without moving at all.

He said, “The path lies straight on through that wood.”

“Keep walking. Don’t stop walking.”

I nodded once. Turned. Walked. I did not run, primarily from pride. I didn’t look back, mostly for safety.

Because I knew, I knew with a certainty that had no business living in my logical, carefully-constructed mind that if I turned around he would still be standing there.

Watching. And the terrifying part wasn’t that thought. The terrifying part was that a quiet, traitorous corner of my heart wished that thought was true.

I made it back to the road. My hands trembling, I changed the tire in the rain. Drove home, got Lily to stop pacing, told her nothing had happened.

I believed that for about six hours. Then I got a buzz on my phone from an unknown number with one message:

“Your tire will go flat again on Route 9. Don’t drive it alone tomorrow.

- D”

I stared at my screen for what felt like an eternity. Then I did the smart thing. The sensible thing. What any sensible woman who enjoyed her ordinary, wolf-free life would do.

I saved the number.