Death isn't an option

Chapter Six

Running is a bad idea with this much adrenaline in my veins.

Not running is worse.

The path blurs under my feet, lamplight strobing in my peripheral vision. My bag slams against my hip with every stride, the strap biting into my shoulder. My lungs burn like I’ve been breathing glass.

Behind me, something crashes through the underbrush. Heavy. Fast.

I don’t look back.

The growl that follows is low enough that it vibrates in my bones. It sounds closer than it did two seconds ago. Too close.

“Sh*t,” I gasp, and push harder.

The concrete gives way to a strip of grass. The edge of the woods looms to my right, a wall of black between the trees. The path curves ahead, disappearing for a moment. If I can just make it around the bend, if I can get back toward the brighter lights, toward people—

Weight slams into me from the side.

It feels like getting hit by a brick wall wrapped in fur. My feet leave the ground. The world tilts; the sky spins. My shoulder hits something hard, then my back, then the breath is punched out of me as I slam into the forest floor.

For a second, there’s no air, no thought. Just white static.Then, sensation comes back all at once.

Hot breath at my neck. The reek of animal and blood and dirt. Paws—actual paws—digging into my back and hip, claws punching through fabric and into skin. A second weight crashes down on my legs, pinning them.

I inhale sharply and the breath rips through my raw throat as a scream.

The thing on my back snarls, wet and thick. I feel teeth close on my shoulder and then there’s just pain.

Bright, white-hot, world-ending pain.

It’s not a clean bite. Teeth tear through skin and muscle, grinding against bone. My vision flashes black at the edges, then snaps back in.

I claw at the ground, fingers digging into damp leaves, trying to pull myself forward. Another set of teeth sinks into my calf, jerking my leg. Fire lances up my body.

“Get—” I choke, voice shredded. “Get off—”

They don’t. Why would they? I’m prey now. Nothing but meat under their claws.

Another swipe of claws rakes across my ribs, high and vicious. I hear and feel something crack. It’s a horrible, wet crunch. My breath cuts off. It’s like the air has nowhere to go. Each attempt to inhale is met with sharp, electric pain.

I scream again. It comes out as a gurgle.

I don’t know how long it goes on.

Time narrows to a rhythm: claws, teeth, impact, my body convulsing under them. The world is sound and pain and the hot slick slide of my own blood pouring over my skin, soaking my shirt, my jeans, the ground beneath me.

Somewhere in the chaos, something in me… lets go.

I stop trying so hard to move. My fingers unclench. The forest floor rises up to meet me where I lie.

This is it, I think, dazed. There’s a strange clarity to it. No ambulance. No hospital. No long, awkward recovery. Just this. It was always going to end with something I didn’t see coming. Maybe it’s better this way...

No more counting exits. No more flinching in class. No more hearing be careful in five different voices. No more being dragged back at the last second by someone else’s hands.

For the first time in years, the idea of stopping isn’t terrifying. It’s… quiet.

Relief blooms in my chest, terrible and wrong. I look at it, horrified and fascinated, even as everything else dissolves.

Somewhere beyond the immediate circle of teeth and claws, a roar tears through the trees.

It’s not human.

It’s too big, too wild, a sound that comes from deep in the chest of something that hunts. The wolves on me freeze for half a heartbeat, their weight shifting.

Another roar, closer, layered with a snarl that’s all threat.

Through the ringing in my ears, I hear my name.

“JUNE!”

It’s not a polished voice now. It’s shredded, savage. The last time I heard Knox Graves speak to me, his anger had been cold, controlled. This is… not that. This sounds like panic ripping through his composure like claws through cloth.

I know it’s him without having to think. The recognition goes bone-deep, like my body has learned his voice and filed it under survival.

The weight on my back shifts suddenly. One of the wolves is wrenched off me with a horrible yelp. The other jerks away from my leg. Cold air hits torn skin. I flop onto my side, coughing wetly.

Shapes crash together in the dark—a tangle of fur and muscle. Snarls turn from hunting to fighting. Something barks in pain. A high, furious howl splits the night.

I catch a glimpse between tree trunks: a massive shadow colliding with another, teeth flashing white, eyes burning like embers.

It’s too much. My vision tunnels again.

Sound muffles, like someone is stuffing cotton into my ears. The pain in my body fades to a dull, distant throb. The smell of blood and dirt and fur recedes.

I blink, and the forest is gone.

I’m standing on a shore that isn’t quite a shore. It's... too different. There's something profoundly off in the air.

Gray sand—or something like it—stretches out under my bare feet, cold and fine. A flat, endless sea laps at the edge, colorless and thick. The sky is twilight, but there’s no sun, no stars, no moon. Just a dim, even glow.

The air is still. No wind. No insects. No rustling leaves. Just a vast, humming silence.

My body feels… light. No weight on my lungs, no screaming ribs. I look down. There’s no blood on my clothes. My shirt is whole. My skin unmarked.

Far out on the horizon, something moves.

At first I think it’s a mountain. Then it takes a step.

A shape rises, colossal and wrong in its scale. A wolf, but not. Its form is fuzzy at the edges, more suggestion than clear lines, but the impression is unmistakable: four limbs, a massive head, a tail like a dark banner. It towers over the flat sea, its eyes two pale discs, watching.

On the gray shore around me, shadows drift.

They look like people, sort of. Humanoid outlines, heads bowed, shoulders slumped. Some stand at the water’s edge, staring out. Some walk along the shore, their feet not quite touching the ground. Faces blur when I try to focus on them.

Am I… dead?

The thought is weirdly calm.

There’s no pain here. No scar, no burn. No weight in my chest from years of holding it together. Just… nothing. A blankness that feels like rest.

I breathe. The air is cool and tastes like rain that hasn’t fallen yet.

I could stay here, I realize. That terrible little relief I felt under the wolves unfurls, blossoming in my ribs like a flower. Maybe this is it. Maybe I finally stepped far enough over some invisible line and there’s no more going back.

The idea doesn’t scare me the way it should. It feels… easy.

“Always leaning toward the water.”

The voice comes from behind me. Female. Wry.

I turn.

She stands a few paces away, where the gray shore curves.

If I had to describe her, I’d say “starlight in a body.” Her skin is dark, not in the way of any earthly shade but like deep space—a backdrop to brighter things. Light swims under the surface, pinpricks like constellations. Her hair falls around her shoulders like a spill of night, threaded with stars. When she moves, it’s like galaxies shifting.

Her eyes are the only thing that feel solid—sharp, bright, ancient.

“Am I dreaming?” I ask. My voice sounds small against all this emptiness.

“Not in any way that matters,” she says.

“Am I dead?”

She considers me for a long moment. “You’re at the edge,” she says. “You’re very fond of it. You've been here more than once--and you've left more than all.”

Behind her, the giant wolf on the horizon lifts its head slightly, as if agreeing.

“I didn’t exactly choose to get torn apart,” I say. “That wasn’t… a plan.”

She hums, amused. “You didn’t move out of the way, either.”

Heat prickles at my cheeks. Even here, apparently, I can be embarrassed.

“You watched the car and you watched the teeth,” she says. “You watched the line and wondered what would happen if you stepped over it. You have been wondering for a long time.”

The crash. The crosswalk. The wolves.

“I—” My throat closes. Words snag on the truth. “It’s just… hard. Being alive.”

“Yes,” she says. “It is.”

There’s no pity in her tone. Just agreement. Like we both understand a basic fact.

“Can I stay?” I ask, surprising myself with how badly I mean it. “Here, I mean. It’s… quiet here. Restful. Peaceful.”

“It is quiet,” she agrees. “It is nothing. It is an ending and a waiting. Is that what you want? Truly?”

The shadows down the shore sway in my peripheral vision. The giant wolf on the horizon lowers its head, eyes still on us.

I think of my parents. My mother’s hand. My father’s laugh. The empty space at every milestone since. They should've been at my highschool graduation. They should've helped me move into college. They should've been there...

I think of cramped dorm rooms and cheap coffee and pop quizzes. Of Knox’s hands on my arms, dragging me out of the path of a car. Of his voice, raw with panic, roaring my name in the trees.

“The idea of not having to try anymore is…” I search for a word big enough and come up short. “Tempting,” I finish, because that’s the closest I can get.

She steps closer.

Up close, she looks less human and more like a suggestion of one, shape drawn by light and darkness. Her gaze drops to my chest, to the place where my scar should be. There’s no mark there now, but I feel something—heat under the skin, a phantom line.

Her fingers lift, hovering just above my sternum.

“You are mine,” she says.

The words curl around my bones like a brand.

“I didn’t agree to that,” I say automatically.

One corner of her mouth lifts. “You did,” she says. “You just don’t remember. You were wrapped in glass and steel and blood, and you chose to breathe when you could have stopped. You chose to take what I offered.”

The crash. The impossible survival. The scar that never behaved like a normal scar.

I swallow. “Who are you?”

Names press at the back of my tongue—goddess, ghost, hallucination—but none of them sit right.

“Some call me Nyra,” she says. “Some call me worse things. I am the Veil between their world and this one. I am the teeth in the dark and the hand that pulls back. I am the reason wolves and witches still have someone to pray to.”

I look past her again at the massive silhouette on the water.

“Their patron saint of bad decisions,” I say.

She laughs, bright and sharp. The sound sends ripples across the gray sea. The giant wolf’s tail flicks once.

“And you,” she says, amusement fading into something more intent, “are my Crownwitch.”

The word hangs in the air, capitalized and heavy. It tugs at something in me that has been asleep, a chord I didn’t know I had.

“I don’t know what that means,” I say.

“You will,” she says. “If you stop trying to die before I’m finished with you.”

I look back at the water. At the shadows. At the horizon.

“It’s easier here,” I whisper.

“I know,” she says. “But easy isn’t why I marked you.”

Marked.

My hand drifts toward my sternum. Her gaze follows the movement.

“Not yet,” she says, and there’s no give in it. “The wolves aren’t ready. The Conclave isn’t ready. Knox is certainly not ready.”

His name in her mouth makes something in my chest twist.

“You know him?” I ask.

“I know all of them,” she says. “Some listen better than others. Your Alpha is stubborn. It is one of his more useful flaws.”

Alpha.

The word slams into me like a second impact.

“Knox,” I say, “is human.”

She smiles in a way that makes it very clear I’m wrong.

“You will see,” she says. “If you go back.”

“If,” I echo.

She lifts her hand the last inch and places her palm flat over my sternum.

Heat blasts through me. Not the gentler warmth of the shoreline, but a searing, white-hot lance that feels like it’s traveling along every nerve, lighting them up from the inside. My nonexistent scar ignites, burning like a brand.

“Not yet,” Nyra says again, and her voice is everywhere. “Wake up, Juniper Cole. Go back to your monster.”

The world lurches.

The gray shore tilts, the sea rears up, the sky cracks. I’m falling, or being flung, or both. The last thing I see is her silhouette against the twilight, hair like night, eyes like stars.

Then everything goes black.

I slam into my body like someone shoved me down a flight of stairs.

Air tears into my lungs in a ragged, desperate gasp. My chest seizes. I cough, choking on the metallic taste of blood. The forest floor is under my palms—wet leaves, cold dirt, twigs biting into my skin.

Sound hits next.

Panting. Low, rumbling growls. The drip of something viscous onto the ground. The distant buzz of a campus lamp humming.

I roll to my side with a groan.

Pain blooms—but it’s wrong.

My ribs ache, deep and bruised, but they’re not the shattered mess they should be. My shoulder throbs, the skin slick and sticky under my fingers, but when I press, there’s no gaping tear. Just ridges. Raised, hot, tender—like wounds days into healing, not seconds.

My jeans are shredded at the thigh. My skin underneath is coated in blood, but when I peel the fabric back, I find only angry, pink lines knitted closed.

The scar at my sternum isn’t a line anymore. It feels like a furnace. Heat pours off it in waves, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

“What the—” I rasp.

A heavy thud nearby makes me flinch.

I force my eyes up.

Something massive lies on the ground a few feet away. A wolf, if wolves came in the size of small cars. Its fur is dark, mottled, matted with blood. Its throat is a ruin, open and red and still. Its jaws are parted, teeth bared in a final snarl.

Another shape sprawls farther out, partially hidden by ferns. Also huge. Also wrong. Also very, very dead.

The air reeks of blood and wet fur and something musky and wild.

I turn my head the other way.

And see it.

A wolf, larger than the other two, stands over one of the bodies.

He’s enormous—easily six feet at the shoulder, maybe more. His fur is so dark it’s almost black, with a faint sheen of shadow-blue where the lamplight catches it. His shoulders ripple with muscle as he shifts his weight. His paws are broad, tipped with claws that could rip through flesh like paper. His tail is low, bristling.

His head lifts.

He looks at me.

His eyes glow.

Not in a cheesy Halloween-decor way. They burn from within, a molten gold that seems to light from a deeper source than the lampposts. They’re intelligent. Aware. Furious.

And they’re familiar.

For one suspended second, the world narrows to that gaze. Forest, blood, dead rogues—everything fades to background.

It’s like when he caught me in the quad. When he caged me against the wall. When he watched me leave his bar. That same relentless, searching focus, now set into a predator’s face.

My heart stutters.

“Knox,” I whisper, before my brain can catch up to my mouth.

The wolf’s ears flick forward.

He takes a step toward me.

I flinch back on instinct, palms skidding in the muck. Every part of me screams wrong wrong wrong. Wolves aren’t this big. Wolves don’t… radiate presence like this. Wolves don’t look at you like they’re mad you almost died on them.

He stops a few feet away, chest heaving. Blood drips from his muzzle. His fur is slashed in places, already drying dark along his flank. He smells like iron and wild and something underneath that my body recognizes from suit jackets and aftershave.

My hands shake.

“Get away,” I croak. It’s not a command so much as a plea. My brain can’t hold the image of him as a man and this at the same time. It feels like my sanity is a rubber band stretched to snapping.

For a long heartbeat, he doesn’t move.

Then his body shudders.

The change starts at his shoulders. Bone and muscle shift under fur, rolling like a wave. The sound of it is awful—wet pops and snaps, tendons creaking. His front legs shorten, joints twisting, reshaping. His spine arches and then compresses. His muzzle retracts, teeth shifting, jaw reshaping.

I can’t look away.

It’s grotesque and hypnotic, watching him collapse inward and stand up again as something else. Fur flows back into skin. Paws flatten into hands and feet. Claws become fingers. The monstrous silhouette shrinks, reshapes, assembles itself into a man.

A very naked, very blood-soaked man.

Knox stands where the wolf was, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat and gore. Blood streaks his arms, his hands, his throat. There are cuts along his ribs, already closing before my eyes—the edges knitting together, the rawness fading to pink.

His eyes are still wrong. The glow has dimmed but not vanished, banked embers instead of open flame.

He sways once, catches himself, and then his gaze finds me again.

“June,” he says.

Just my name. Two syllables, wrecked.

My breath shudders in and out. I can’t decide whether to scramble away or reach for him.

Behind him, I register more movement. Two other wolves, smaller than his wolf form but still massive, circle the clearing, hackles raised, scanning the trees. One shakes itself, body rippling, then collapses into a crouch and shifts—bone and fur rolling back, leaving Mara, naked to the waist and spattered in blood, eyes still too bright. The other follows—Kade, breathing hard, a dark cut on his shoulder.

They don’t come closer. They keep their distance, heads lowered, attention flicking between Knox and the treeline, like they’re more afraid of interrupting than of anything else in the world.

The thought that I should be embarrassed about any of this—about the nudity, about the gore—flickers and dies. Shock crowds out everything but the essentials.

I look at Knox. At the blood on his mouth. At the bodies at his feet. At the way his hands are still curled like claws.

Monster, my mind supplies.

Savior, something else counters.

He takes another step toward me, slower now, as if approaching a skittish animal.

“I’ve got you,” he says, voice rough. “You’re alright.”

I glance down at myself—at the tattered jeans, the torn shirt, the blood that should be pouring from fatal wounds that are already closed.

Nothing about this is alright.

I meet his eyes again.

“What are you?” I whisper.

The glow in them flickers.

His jaw clenches. He looks, in that moment, more dangerous and more human than I’ve ever seen him.

“Yours,” Nyra’s voice seems to echo in my skull. “Yours, and you are mine.”

I don’t know whether to run or hold on.