Holly didn’t mean to wander far.
She told herself it was just air she needed—space after the way the walls had begun to feel closer, the ceilings lower. The packhouse hummed behind her, alive with voices and movement, but something inside her itched for quiet.
For stillness.
Snow crunched beneath her boots as she followed one of the well-worn paths curling away from the main house. The morning was pale and cold, the sky stretched thin and brittle overhead. Pines stood like sentinels, heavy with frost, their branches bowing under the weight of winter.
She breathed in deeply.
Pine. Smoke. Wolf.
Safe, her mind insisted.
Her body didn’t listen.
That feeling—the pressure she’d tried to ignore—pressed tighter between her shoulders. Not fear exactly. Awareness. Like standing on a stage be
