Episode7
1001 Words
The next morning broke with a sky like burnished steel. Heavy clouds pressed low over the forest canopy, and the wind carried the distinct scent of tension—damp earth, moss, and something faintly metallic.
Elara felt it before she saw it.
As she stepped out to gather water from the stream, her fox senses flared. The birds had gone silent. The leaves barely moved. The usual sounds of the morning were hushed, as if the forest itself were holding its breath.
She crouched by the stream and dipped her pail, but her eyes scanned the treeline constantly.
Kael appeared from around the side of the cabin, shirt damp with sweat, hair tousled. He had been chopping firewood.
“You feel that?” she asked.
He nodded. “Something’s wrong.”
“Someone’s watching.”
Kael turned toward the woods. “Not your Council?”
“No. This feels different. Quieter. Hungrier.”
They locked eyes, the same word hovering between them unspoken.
Wolves.
Elara straightened, the metal pail forgotten at her feet. “We need to move you. If they’ve found you—”
“They haven’t,” he said calmly. “Not yet. If they had, they wouldn’t be hiding.”
She clenched her fists. “Then they’re scouting.”
“Or testing.”
“Same thing.”
Kael moved to her side. “We can handle it.”
“You mean I can handle it,” she snapped.
He looked at her, brows lowering. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Elara exhaled and ran a hand through her hair. “I’m sorry. I just—this was a safe place. It’s been safe for years.”
“I won’t let them take that from you.”
She looked up at him. “Then you have to be smart. Don’t fight unless you have to. Don’t shift. Don’t reveal what you are.”
He hesitated. “What if they force me to?”
“Then I’ll fight with you.”
Kael’s expression softened. “You’d break the law for me?”
“I already have.”
By late afternoon, the clouds broke open. A slow rain fell, thin and steady, blurring the edges of the forest in gray light.
Elara stayed inside, pacing.
Kael cleaned and sharpened the small collection of tools she kept in a locked chest—blades, snares, salves.
“I was trained to track,” he said. “And to evade. But that was when I was one of them.”
She glanced at him. “You were a scout?”
“Worse,” he said. “I was a blood-hound.”
Elara froze. “You hunted your own?”
Kael didn’t answer right away.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, not at first,” he said. “They told us we were eliminating threats. That the ones we found were dangerous. Rogues. Criminals. But it wasn’t true.”
“What were they really?”
“Outcasts. Dissidents. Shifters who refused to bow.”
She felt sick.
“I was young. Fast. They used me to find people who didn’t want to be found.”
“And then what?”
“They didn’t always survive.”
He finally looked at her.
“You think I’m a monster now.”
“No,” Elara said. “I think you were broken. And I think you put yourself back together.”
Kael stared at her, something raw behind his golden eyes. “That’s not forgiveness.”
“No,” she said. “It’s understanding.”
The knock came just after dusk.
Three short raps. Firm. Measured.
Elara’s blood ran cold.
Kael was already moving. He disappeared behind the old curtain partition she used for storage, grabbing a blanket and crouching low.
She crossed to the door, adjusted her expression into something neutral, and opened it.
It was Elder Myrin.
A tall, stern man with an ash-gray beard and eyes like frostbitten stone. He stood beneath the dripping porch roof, staff in hand, cloak soaked through. Two other Council guards flanked him—tiger shifters. Brutal. Loyal.
“Elara,” Myrin said.
“Elder,” she replied smoothly. “You’re far from the ridge.”
“There were rumors,” he said.
“There's always rumors.”
“This one came from a jaguar,” he said pointedly.
Her stomach twisted. Jase.
“I’m sure whoever it was misunderstood,” she said. “I’ve had no visitors.”
“May I come in?”
Her pulse thundered. “Of course.”
He stepped inside, dripping rain onto the floor. The guards remained just outside, eyes scanning the trees.
Myrin glanced around the cabin slowly, eyes lingering on the hearth, the books, the drying herbs.
“I remember your mother,” he said. “She was wise. Careful.”
Elara forced a smile. “She taught me everything I know.”
“And yet…” His eyes landed on the second blanket by the fire.
Elara stepped forward, voice calm. “I’ve been ill. Fevered. I use the extra warmth when I sleep.”
“Mm.”
He moved to the far wall, touching a jar of clover resin.
Then he turned. “Do you believe the Council protects this territory, Elara?”
“I believe it tries to.”
His brow lifted. “A diplomatic answer.”
“I’ve always been diplomatic.”
He studied her for a long moment. “If a threat entered Hollowshade… if something were hidden here, would you tell us?”
She didn’t blink. “Yes.”
Myrin smiled, slow and unsettling.
“Good,” he said. “Because something is coming. And when it gets here, those who protected it will fall with it.”
He turned and left without another word.
The door shut softly behind him.
Elara stood frozen until Kael stepped from the shadows, silent and pale.
“He knows,” Kael said quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered. “And he’ll be back.”
- Writer
