His Human Mate

5.

The woods blurred around me as I climbed the frozen hill, knees trembling, breaths coming in sharp, shallow bursts. Twigs snapped beneath my boots, thorns scratched my legs through the fabric, and the wind howled louder the higher I went. My vision swam. The world spun. Every step felt like dragging dead weight—but I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t stop.

If I stopped, I might turn back.

If I turned back… he might die.

The slope grew steeper, the trees thinner, revealing a skeletal ridge lined with jagged rocks and thorned brush. I reached the top of the hill, where the moonlight washed everything in pale silver. I paused to catch my breath, heart thundering against my ribs like it wanted to break free of my chest.

That’s when I felt it.

The shift in the air.

It was too quiet.

No rustle of animals. No whisper of leaves. Just silence, thick and unnatural, like the forest was holding its breath.

Then came the screech.

High, piercing, inhuman.

I barely had time to flinch before the sky erupted above me—wings tearing through the night like smoke and shadow.

Bats.

Dozens of them.

No—hundreds.

They came from the trees, from the ground, from the rocks themselves. As if the forest had spit them out just to punish me.

Their wings beat like thunder in my ears. I turned to run, but they were already there. One clawed at my cheek—another tangled in my hair. I screamed, stumbled back, swatting wildly as their tiny teeth and razor-sharp claws slashed through the sweatshirt sleeves and dug into my arms.

“What the hell?!” I cried out, trying to cover my face.

But they weren’t just flying around me.

They were attacking me.

Targeting me.

Tearing into my skin like I was prey.

Pain exploded across my scalp, my shoulders, my hands—hot, sudden, and blinding. I dropped to the ground, curling into myself, arms over my head. My body convulsed with the force of it all.

Why?

Why were they doing this?

I was nothing. No one. Just a broken girl trying to escape her demons.

But they didn’t care.

One of them latched onto my back. Another slashed across my thigh. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

And then—

A voice.

Not mine.

Not theirs.

“She is not here for the Death Code!”

The sound boomed across the hill, low and commanding like thunder wrapped in gravel.

And in an instant—

They stopped.

The swarm of wings shattered apart. As if someone had snapped invisible strings holding them together, the bats peeled away from me and rose into the air in synchronized chaos. Within seconds, the sky was empty again. Just the stars. Just the moon. Just the wind.

I lay on the ground, gasping, blood seeping from a dozen cuts across my body.

Footsteps rushed toward me—fast, heavy, certain.

“Jennifer!” Jack’s voice was a ragged shout now, panicked in a way I had never heard from him before.

I managed to lift my head just slightly, pain lancing through every inch of me. My body felt broken. Shredded. I couldn’t even cry—I was too far gone for that.

Jack dropped beside me, eyes wide with something close to fury and fear.

His hands hovered over my shoulders, not touching yet, as if afraid he might break me further.

“Jesus,” he whispered, eyes scanning the damage. “What were you thinking?”

“I—” My voice was hoarse. Cracked. “I had to go…”

He finally pressed his hands to my shoulders, grounding me.

“Why?” His voice was low, not angry, but deeply hurt. “Why did you run, Jennifer? Did I scare you? Am I that much of a danger to you?”

I blinked at him, the pain making it hard to focus. But I saw him—really saw him. The blood on his hands from carrying me. The tremble in his fingers. The way his chest heaved like he’d run miles to reach me.

“No,” I croaked. “You’re not the danger.”

He stared.

“I am.”

Tears finally came then. Warm, stinging, and unwanted. I turned my face away, ashamed. “I’m the one who brings danger. You don’t understand, Jack—my father… he’ll come. He’ll find me. He’ll kill anyone who stands between us. That’s what he does.”

Jack was silent for a long moment. The wind brushed over us like a whisper.

Then he exhaled, voice barely above a breath.

“Why would the bats attack you?”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know. I didn’t do anything. I just ran—”

He studied me carefully, almost like he didn’t believe me.

“They only attack when someone seeks the Code. When someone breaks a law older than the forest itself.”

“What code? I don’t—” I winced as I tried to sit up, and Jack steadied me with a hand.

“Never mind that now,” he said. “Let’s get you back. You need to be cleaned up before those cuts get infected.”

I looked at him, bloodied and broken, and whispered, “You shouldn’t help me. You’re not safe.”

Jack looked down at me then, jaw tight. Eyes dark like the storm he carried behind them.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

And with that, he lifted me gently into his arms—like I weighed nothing at all—and began the long walk back down the hill.

The forest watched.

The bats were gone.

But I felt it.

This wasn’t over.

Something ancient had been stirred.

And Jack wasn’t just some lonely man in a cabin anymore.

There was something he wasn’t telling me.

Something I was now tangled in.