The trees had teeth here.
That was the first thing I noticed when I crossed what I had believed to be the boundary of a werewolf territory.
My boots were soaked through. My lungs burned.
I had been running for what felt like days, though in truth, the moon had only cycled through one full rise and fall since I had last felt safe.
The forest smelled of iron and pine resin and something older, something that sat at the back of my throat like a word I could not quite pronounce.
I had told myself, with the stubborn certainty of someone who has survived long enough to grow reckless, that I knew what I was walking into.
I was wrong.
They materialized from the treeline the way shadows do at dusk, gradually, and then all at once.
There were perhaps eleven of them, maybe more. Some stood
