The beast didn’t move. It just knelt there, massive and still, like the whole world had pressed pause on this moment.
Rain poured from its fur, slicking it with rivers of silver. Thunder kept rattling the sky, but even the storm seemed to hold its breath, caught between hunter and hunted, legend and castaway, myth and flesh.
Nyra couldn’t catch her breath. Her lungs worked. Her chest moved. But the air itself felt wrong—as if she’d stumbled into a world built from a different element.
That thing in front of her should have killed her already. Instead, it held its ground, head bowed into the soaked dirt, those bright gold eyes soft and unreadable. Nothing about it made sense. Nothing about its calm fit the world she knew: a world of muscle, hunger, violence.
Her mind shut down—flat refu
