***Rainah***
The scent of the offering didn't just reach me; it invaded me. It was a thick, cloying mixture of iron-rich blood and the sharp, piney undertone of tobacco—a scent so distinct, so aggressively human, that it felt like a physical slap to the face.
I didn't move at first. I stood at the edge of the clearing, my paws sinking into the fresh, powdery snow that had fallen overnight. My heart was a frantic, trapped bird in my chest, beating against my ribs with enough force to make my vision blur.
He was here.
The realization didn't come as a thought; it came as a primal, gut-level certainty. Sawyer. The man who had haunted the periphery of my life for weeks, the man who had turned our desperate flight for freedom into a game of cat-and-mouse.
I took a step forward, my hackles
