Chapter 2 The Howl In The Forest

• Julian rode the way other men prayed, alone, before the moon set, when the forest still belonged to deer and mist and things that did not answer to a crown. He had three guards trailing a respectful distance behind, close enough to reach him if something went wrong, far enough to leave him the illusion of solitude he had asked for, and a wolf under his skin that had gone strangely quiet, the way a hunting dog goes quiet right before it points at something in the brush.
• The sound stopped him mid-stride. A voice thin and cracked, rising and falling somewhere ahead, not quite words, not quite a scream, the kind of sound a throat makes after it has already screamed itself past the point of screaming and only has this left. His guards heard it a half breath after he did, and their hands went to their swords. Julian's wolf came up under his skin so fast his vision sharpened at the edges, gold bleeding into his eyes before he could stop it, before he even fully understood what he was reacting to.
• "There," he said, already moving, already faster on his horse than any of them could follow.
• The trees blurred past him, branches tearing at his sleeves, and the pull in his chest sharpened with every stride, no longer vague, no longer a mood he couldn't name, but a compass needle swinging hard toward a single point in the dark. He left his horse at a fallen log and went the rest of the way on foot, faster that way, his wolf so close to the surface now that his own footsteps had gone silent and quick without him deciding to make them so.
• They found her lashed to an old oak with rope pulled so tight it had bitten dark grooves into her wrists, deep enough to have bled and dried and bled again. Her dress, what remained of it, hung torn at the shoulder, dried blood crusted along her collarbone and down one arm. Her head hung forward, dark hair curtaining her face, and for one terrible second Julian was certain he was looking at a corpse someone had forgotten to bury, left for the crows and whatever else the forest sent to clean up what men did not want to look at anymore.
• "Is she alive?" he demanded, and his voice did not sound like his own voice.
• "We have not checked, my prince," one guard admitted, hanging back, and Julian walked past him without another word, dropping to his knees in the leaf litter, pressing two fingers beneath her jaw the way his old tutor had taught him years ago on a lesson he had never expected to need this badly. A pulse. Faint, but there, stubborn as a heartbeat has any right to be after everything hers had clearly survived.
• The moment his skin touched hers, something in his chest pulled tight, like a rope drawn suddenly taut between two trees that had never known they were connected until this exact second. It was not pain, not quite. It was recognition, the kind a wolf feels once in a life if he is lucky, and Julian had heard the old stories enough times, half believed and half laughed at over supper, to know exactly what it meant even as every instinct in him refused to believe it could be happening here, now, over a half dead stranger tied to a tree in the dark. A mate bond did not announce itself like this. It was not supposed to work like this.
• And yet his wolf, silent and restless all evening, rose up under his ribs and howled, low and private, a sound only Julian himself could hear, and it did not stop, not even when he told it, quietly and firmly, that this was not the time.
• "Cut her down," he said, and his voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "Gently. Damn you, gently, mind her wrists."
• The guards worked the rope loose with careful hands, and when she slumped forward Julian caught her before she could hit the ground, gathering her weight against his chest with an instinct he did not remember choosing, one arm cradling her head the way you'd hold something you had already decided, somewhere below conscious thought, that you could not survive dropping.
• He did not let go of her hand the whole ride back, her weight slumped against his chest, her breath so shallow he kept checking, again and again, that it had not stopped. Twice he caught himself pressing his wrist to her wrist, an old instinct, a wolf's instinct, checking for the mark that would make the pull in his chest into something undeniable, something with a name. He told himself he was only steadying her against the motion of the horse. He did not quite believe it even as he said it to himself, and some small, honest part of him was almost afraid to look too closely, afraid of what he would do with the answer if he found it.
• The gates of the pack house swung open to a scene no one had prepared for that night: the beloved prince, mud to his knees, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and forest damp, carrying a half dead stranger in his own arms past his sister and her friend, who stood frozen on the steps and said nothing at all as he swept by them and shouted for the pack healer, his voice cracking on the word in a way none of them had heard from him before.
• Ivy's wolf, usually so quiet and so tired of losing, lifted its head and went very still, watching the stranger's limp hand swing from Julian's arms, and some old and patient part of Ivy understood, before anyone told her anything at all, that she had just watched something in her brother's chest come alive that had never once come alive for her, not in 23 years of trying, and that whatever this stranger was, she had already, without lifting a finger, taken something Ivy had spent her whole life failing to earn.