DEVOURED BY TWO

The forest had no name in this dream, but my feet knew every root. I ran. My lungs burned with each ragged breath, bare feet slapping the cold earth as silver moonlight sliced through the canopy above me. The trees were ancient here, tall and twisted, their bark scarred like they had witnessed things no living thing should see. Branches clawed at my hair, my arms, my skin but I didn't stop. I couldn't. Some primal part of me, buried deeper than thought, deeper than reason, knew that stopping was not an option. I didn't know what I was running from. I never did in this dream. Only that whatever it was, it wanted me alive. That was the part that terrified me most. The air tasted like rain and iron, thick with something electric, as the sky before lightning splits it open. My dress was white, thin, and not mine; it clung to my legs as I pushed through the undergrowth, stumbling over roots that seemed to shift deliberately beneath my feet. The moon above was full and merciless, flooding everything in cold silver light that made the shadows between the trees look like open mouths. Keep running. Keep running. Keep.. Then I heard them. Not footsteps. Not growls. Breathing. Heavy, rhythmic, deliberate two sets of it, one on my left, one on my right, closing in from either side like a trap snapping shut around something it had been waiting years to catch. I whipped my head sideways and caught a flash of movement between the trees. Dark shapes, low and massive, kept pace with me effortlessly. Not chasing. Herding. A sound tore out of my throat. I pushed harder, arms pumping, legs screaming, lungs begging me to stop. The trees began to thin. I could see light ahead and an opening, a clearing, and for one desperate, stupid second I thought I would escape. I burst through the treeline and my feet slid to a stop. A clearing. Perfectly circular, perfectly still, bathed in moonlight so bright it hurt. The grass was silver-white beneath my feet. There was no other exit. No path, no gap, no mercy. I spun around. They emerged from the treeline together, like they had choreographed it, like they had done this a thousand times before. Two wolves. Massively impossible, wrongly massive the size of horses, their bodies built like war itself had taken animal form. One was dark as midnight, his fur so black it seemed to swallow the light around him, shadows clinging to him as if they belonged to him. The other was the color of ash and old scars, pale and ghost-like, his coat carrying the silver of too many full moons survived. They moved toward me slowly. The worst part is the slowness. The absolute, unshakeable certainty in every step. These were not creatures that rushed. They had never needed to. My back hit something solid, a tree at the edge of the clearing and I realized with a nauseating drop in my stomach that I had nowhere left to go My legs had forgotten how to work. They stopped just feet away, close enough that I felt the heat rolling off their massive bodies in waves, close enough to count the old scars threaded through the ash wolf's coat, close enough to see my own reflection, small and trembling, in their eyes. And then, both at once, as if it had been agreed upon long before either of us was born, their eyes lit up. Gold. Blazing, molten, ancient gold. Not the gold of jewelry or sunlight or anything soft. The gold of embers right before they become fire. The gold of something that had been searching for a very, very long time. The air left my body completely. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. Could only stand there, back against the bark, heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to get out, as the midnight wolf lowered his great head and took one slow, final step toward me. Then his voice came. Not from his throat. Not spoken aloud, not exactly but pressed directly into my mind, warm and deep and immovable, like a hand laid flat against my chest: "We found you." The ash wolf's eyes pulsed, brighter, closer. "You are ours." The words didn't echo. They settled. Like they had always been there, like my bones had been waiting to hear them, like every nightmare I'd ever had had been building quietly, patiently, toward this exact moment in this exact clearing under this exact moon...... "Selene." I opened my mouth to scream. "Selene, wake up." The clearing shattered. I gasped so hard I nearly choked on it. "The ceiling of my bedroom stared back at me white, cracked slightly at the corner near the window, completely, mercifully ordinary. Morning light pressed pale and grey through the curtains. Outside, the city was already awake, a cab horn somewhere below, the distant rumble of the subway, the familiar chaos of a New York morning that never bothered to wait for anyone. My sheets were soaked through. My heart was still running. I pressed both hands flat against my chest and focused on breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Just a dream. It was just a dream. It was always just a dream. The wolves, the clearing, the gold eyes, that voice pressed into my skull like a thumbprint "You are ours." "Selene, honey?" A soft knock at my door, then it opened a few inches. My mom leaned in, already dressed in her work scrubs, a mug of coffee wrapped in both her hands. She took one look at me sitting up in bed, hair everywhere, probably looking like I'd just survived something, and her expression softened with that quiet concern she never quite managed to hide. "Bad dream again?" I opened my mouth to say no out of habit. "Yeah," I said instead. She hummed, the way she did when she was choosing her words. She nudged the door wider and leaned against the frame, not coming fully in, giving me space the way she always did. "The wolves again?" I looked at her. "How did you know it was the wolves?" She gave me a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Lucky guess." She nodded toward my nightstand. "Your alarm didn't go off?" I turned. 7:44. My stomach dropped straight through the mattress. "Oh no," I was out of bed before I finished the sentence, nearly catching my foot in the sheets. "No, no, no my interview is at ten—" "I know, that's why I came in." Mom straightened, stepping back into the hallway as I scrambled past her toward the bathroom. "There's a bagel on the counter and I made coffee. Don't skip breakfast, Selene, you always get in your head when you don't eat." "I won't, I won't" I was already squeezing toothpaste onto my brush. "And the grey blazer," she called from the hallway. "Not the black one. The grey one is more you." I paused, put a toothbrush in my mouth, and looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Wild hair. Tired eyes. Cheeks still flushed from a dream that should have faded by now but hadn't. Those gold eyes. That voice, low and unhurried and sure of itself. "You are ours." I spat, rinsed, and gripped the edge of the sink. "Get it together, Selene," I muttered to myself. New York did not care about your dreams. This interview did not care about your dreams. The rent that was due in two weeks absolutely did not care about your dreams. I reached for my moisturizer and got moving