***Rainah***
The forest had finally begun to feel like ours. After weeks of shivering in the shadows and scavenging for leftovers, we had carved out a rhythm. We were lean, we were hungry, and we were dangerous. I had become the leader I never thought I could be, and the pack—my pack—looked to me not with the cowering deference of the old hierarchy, but with a fierce, shared loyalty.
But the woods have a way of reminding you that you are never truly the master.
It started with the scent. It wasn't the clean, sharp pine of the wilderness, nor was it the stale tobacco of the man who had stalked us. It was something heavier, something oily and wrong. It smelled like wet fur, stagnant water, and the copper tang of old violence.
I was patrolling the northern ridge, the wind whipping through
