Episode10
748 Words
The forest felt older this far south.
The trees were taller, the ground mossier, the air so still it seemed to listen. Elara moved like a whisper through the undergrowth, Kael only a step behind her. The path they followed wasn’t marked on any map, passed down instead through fox blood and memory—a hidden trail known only to the outliers and outcasts.
It was the second day since they’d fled the cave.
Two days without rest, two nights with barely enough sleep to keep their senses sharp. But neither of them complained. They couldn’t afford to. Not when the Council could be just a few miles behind. And not when the black-furred wolf that haunted Kael’s past was almost certainly drawing closer.
“Stop,” Elara whispered, raising her hand.
Kael froze mid-step.
She crouched low, brushing her fingers over a patch of mud near the roots of a cypress. Her sharp eyes scanned the track—a pawprint, wide, clawed, deeper than it should be.
Not a bear.
Wolf.
She touched the center of the print and closed her eyes.
“Fresh?” Kael asked quietly.
“Hours,” she said. “Maybe less.”
“Mine?”
“No,” she said. “Too big.”
Kael’s face hardened.
“I know this track,” he murmured. “It’s him. Or one of his sentries.”
Elara stood and adjusted the bow slung over her shoulder. “Then we move faster.”
They ran in silence through the trees, every stride calculated. Kael kept pace with her easily, despite his larger frame. He no longer moved like someone recovering from injury. He moved like a predator again—fluid, controlled, coiled.
That should have worried her.
Instead, it thrilled her.
They stopped by a narrow creek as dusk fell, the last of the golden light spilling through the canopy like honey. Elara pulled out her flint, struck sparks into dry moss, and nursed a small fire into life beneath a makeshift stone ring. She boiled water for tea and tore strips of dried meat for dinner.
Kael sat across from her, shirt off, arms resting on his knees, steam rising faintly from his skin in the cool air.
“I never asked what they call you back home,” she said.
Kael smirked. “I don’t really have a home.”
“But they gave you a name.”
He was quiet for a beat.
“They called me Fenris.”
Elara blinked. “The old wolf god?”
“They thought it was clever,” he muttered. “Said I had too much fury in me to be named anything gentler.”
“Do you?”
“I used to.”
Elara sipped her tea, studying him over the rim. “And now?”
He looked into the fire. “Now I just want peace.”
She believed him. Not because of what he said—but because of the way his voice caught when he said it.
She leaned forward, brushing her fingers across his hand. He turned it over, laced their fingers without hesitation.
“Your turn,” he said.
“For what?”
“What did you get called when you weren’t looking?”
Elara smiled faintly. “Vixen.”
He raised a brow. “I can see it.”
“Not the way you think. It wasn’t a compliment.”
Kael’s smile faded. “They didn’t like your independence.”
“No,” she said. “They feared it.”
He squeezed her hand gently. “They should.”
Later that night, curled together beneath the stars, Elara rested her head on Kael’s chest and listened to the steady thrum of his heart.
“Why me?” she asked quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Why trust me? You could have run. Hid deeper in the wilds. Found another border.”
Kael’s fingers traced lazy circles along her spine.
“Because when I looked at you,” he said, “I saw something I hadn’t seen in a long time.”
“What?”
“Hope.”
Elara closed her eyes.
She didn’t believe in fate. She didn’t believe in soulmates or prophecy or any of the stories whispered by elders to comfort children.
But she believed in instinct.
And everything inside her told her Kael wasn’t a danger to her life.
He was a danger to her heart.
And somehow, that felt more terrifying.
- Writer
