Silver's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

Silver carried the stranger deeper into the trees, away from the blood-marked clearing. Their weight against his chest felt different now that he'd chosen to lift them. Not heavier. Just more real. The stranger's breath came quick and shallow against his collarbone, and Silver could feel the tremor running through their body. Fear or blood loss, he couldn't tell. Maybe both. The stranger's hand pressed something hard against his chest. Silver glanced down. Fangs. Long, curved, and stained dark at the tips. Not pulled from a mouth — torn out. The roots were jagged, ripped free with force. The stranger's voice came out broken. "It followed me. Not the blood. Me." Their fingers closed tighter around his shirt. "Put me down. Run. It's been circling your territory for days, waiting for me to reach you." Silver stopped at the edge of a grove where ancient black trees twisted together like gnarled fists. Beyond them, the forest opened into his den grounds. Safety, if such a thing existed tonight. But the stranger was right. He'd felt something wrong in his territory for days, a pressure at the edges he'd ignored. Now he understood. Something had been orbiting, patient and deliberate. Fresh tracks cut through the dirt at the grove's entrance — massive paw prints filled with blood, leading in a wide arc around the trees. Whatever made them had been here recently. Was probably still close. The stranger pushed weakly at his chest. "Please. Just leave me." Their mismatched eyes met his, and Silver saw it clearly. They weren't asking him to abandon them out of nobility. They were asking because they believed he would. Because everyone always did. Silver tightened his grip and stepped through the grove into the open ground beyond. His wolf surged forward, not howling, but steady. Resolved. "I don't run," he said. "And I don't leave people to die alone." The stranger went still in his arms, and Silver felt the shift between them — small but unmistakable. They'd expected him to put them down. He hadn't. That changed something, even if neither of them had words for it yet.