Chapter 4: Teeth
1430 Words
The door hit the frame again, and this time one of the hinges screamed.
I flinched back on instinct. The cabin felt too small, too fragile, like it had been built to hold cold and dust, not violence. Another blow rattled the wood. Splinters shook loose from the latch. Outside, the voices tightened into a low, ugly chorus.
“There’s two of them,” one of the wolves barked.
“Doesn’t matter,” another answered. “Open the door.”
The man beside me did not move.
That was the strangest part. He stood there in the firelight, calm as a blade left on a table, watching the door with an expression so still it bordered on cold. But it was not emptiness. It was control. The kind that made my skin prickle because it felt earned, not performed.
“They are going to break in,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said.
My stomach dropped. “And you are just standing there?”
He looked at me then, and the fire caught in his eyes. “Do you want me to lie?”
Another удар slammed into the door, hard enough to crack the wood around the lock.
“No,” I snapped, breathless now. “I want you to do something.”
His mouth curved, faint and sharp. “I am.”
He moved then, but not toward the door.
Toward me.
I backed up a step without meaning to. He noticed, of course he noticed, and that dangerous little curve of his mouth deepened.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
“I am not hiding behind you.”
“You are if you want to live through the next minute.”
The bluntness of it stole my breath.
Outside, something growled low and deep, the sound vibrating through the cabin floorboards. My pulse kicked hard. Another hit came against the door, then a second one. The frame groaned. The old wood was not going to hold much longer.
“What are they?” I asked.
His gaze never left the door. “Cowards.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the one they deserve.”
The latch split with a sharp crack.
The first wolf burst through the door in a rush of fur and rage, shoulder slamming into the frame. He was huge, gray and scarred, his eyes wild with pack fury. He landed low, snarling, and then his gaze locked on me.
Mine.
The wolf lunged.
Everything happened at once.
The man beside me moved like the dark itself had decided to strike. He caught the wolf mid-air with one hand at the throat, slammed him into the wall, and the sound that followed was sickening, all air and impact and fury. The wolf snapped his jaws, claws scraping wildly for purchase.
I staggered back, heart hammering, but there was no time to think. The second wolf came crashing through the broken door, teeth bared, and then a third shape shoved in behind him, all muscle and intent.
“Run!” one of them barked.
Not at me.
At him.
That was when I understood.
They were not here for me alone.
They were afraid of him.
He turned his head slightly, still holding the first wolf against the wall with terrifying ease. His eyes found mine for one brief second.
“Too late,” he said.
Then he released the first wolf and drove him into the floor with enough force to crack the boards.
The cabin erupted.
One wolf came at me from the left. I threw myself sideways, grabbed the broken chair and swung it hard into his shoulder. He stumbled, more surprised than hurt, and I used the opening to shove past him. Pain flared in my side as a claw ripped the fabric of my shirt, just grazing skin. I gasped and kept moving.
The fire snapped, sending sparks into the air.
The man caught the second wolf by the jaw and twisted. Bone cracked. The beast howled. His movements were precise, brutal, almost elegant in their violence. He did not fight like someone defending himself. He fought like someone who had done this before and had no intention of wasting time.
My breath came ragged. “What are you?”
He did not look at me as he answered. “Alive, unfortunately for them.”
One wolf slammed into the table, sending it skidding across the floor. The cabin shuddered under the force. The smell of wet fur, wood smoke, and blood filled the room all at once. I backed toward the fireplace, searching wildly for anything I could use. A poker. A stick. A weapon. Anything.
The third wolf snarled and shifted direction, coming for me again.
I grabbed the iron poker from beside the hearth and swung with everything I had. The metal connected with his shoulder. He yelped, stumbling, and I nearly fell with the force of the blow. Before I could recover, the wolf snapped at my arm.
Then the man was there.
He caught the wolf by the scruff and flung him across the room like he weighed nothing. The beast smashed into the far wall and crumpled to the floor. For one stunned second, I just stared. No one should have been that strong. No one should have moved that fast.
He finally looked at me, and there was blood on his knuckles now, dark against his skin.
“Are you hurt?”
The question was so calm, so oddly careful, that I almost laughed from shock.
“Do I look fine?”
His gaze flicked to the torn edge of my shirt, to the shallow red line across my side, and something sharpened in his expression. Not panic. Something colder.
“They touched you,” he said.
The room went still.
Even the wolves seemed to hesitate.
His voice had changed. It was quieter now, but it carried more threat than shouting ever could.
“You touched her.”
The wolf closest to him backed up a step. “We were ordered to bring her back.”
The man smiled.
It was a terrible thing to see.
“Then you should have run faster.”
He moved.
I did not see the full shape of it, only the blur of dark cloth and too-fast motion, the wolf’s startled cry, the crash of body against wall. The cabin seemed to pulse around him, firelight flickering wildly across his face. When he turned back, the first wolf was gone. So was the second. The third one lay groaning near the broken door, too injured to rise.
I stood frozen, poker still in my hand, chest heaving.
He did not even look winded.
Not a mark on him.
He glanced at the wolf near the door, then at the blood on my side, and stepped toward me.
I should have stepped back.
I did not.
He stopped close enough that I could feel the heat of him, close enough that the fire in the hearth barely mattered.
“This is getting dangerous,” I whispered.
A faint line appeared between his brows, almost like amusement. “Only now?”
Before I could answer, a sound cracked through the trees outside. Not a branch. Not an animal. A signal. Sharp and deliberate.
His head lifted instantly.
Every muscle in his body changed.
Then he turned toward the window, and I saw it too.
Torches.
Moving through the dark.
Too many.
One by one, glowing through the trees like a ring of fire tightening around the cabin.
His expression went still.
Not surprised.
Worse.
Recognizing.
“They brought more,” I said, my voice thin.
He did not answer right away. Then, very softly, almost to himself, he said, “No. That is not Kael’s order.”
My blood ran cold.
“What do you mean?”
His jaw flexed once. He looked at the window again, and for the first time since I had met him, something unsettled passed through his face.
“Because these are not your pack’s torches,” he said.
The first arrow hit the cabin wall with a violent thunk.
Then another.
Then the front window shattered inward.
And from the dark outside, a voice I had never heard before called my name. Slow. Certain. Hungry.
“Elara. Come out. We have been looking for you.”
He turned to me in one sharp motion, his eyes dark as a storm.
“Do exactly what I say,” he said.
Then the front door exploded inward.
- Writer
