I was going to die here.
Maybe not now, not this second—but it was coming. The forest felt like it knew. The way it breathed around me, like lungs full of secrets, holding in the final exhale just for me.
The serpent coiled in the underbrush again, its scales barely catching moonlight as it slithered. Watching. Waiting. Just like everything else in this cursed place.
“Go ahead,” I muttered, too weak to move, too bitter to care. “Eat me. Might as well make myself useful.”
If not the serpent, then the wolves.
Not my kind.
Not pack.
Not Cain.
Not Cyrus.
Just lone wolves with nothing left but their hunger and violence.
I was good meat now.
I sank deeper into the wet earth, knees scraped, hair tangled like vines. My breathing was shallow, like I didn’t want the forest to hear me. Lik
