Nightfall felt different after the town.
Nothing had physically changed. The same houses crouched under the same trees. The same smoke curled from the hall chimney. The same wolves shouted over the same too‑loud pups.
But Aria carried new lines in her head now: streets, doors, blind corners. Human patterns, overlaid on the familiar map of her own forest.
Her brain was tired of lines.
She slept badly that night. Not with nightmares of Aiden or the Silvercrest hall — those had finally faded to a dull background bruise — but with flashes of glass and fluorescent light, of logos and blinking cameras and a boy’s voice saying, They study wolves so we can see them on TV.
When she woke, it was with a dull throb behind her eyes and the urge to run hard and far in any direction that wasn’t pave
