Harper
Noise.
A heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It is too loud, a drum beating inside my skull. It is not mine. Mine is a frantic, panicked flutter, a trapped bird against my ribs.
The air is wrong. It is too thick. I can taste it. Woodsmoke. Pine needles. Damp earth. And something else. Something warm, and musky, and alive. Animal.
My eyes crack open. The light is a physical blow, a blade of pure white that makes me flinch. I squeeze them shut again, a groan tearing from my raw throat. Every inch of me is a symphony of pain. Not the sharp, clean agony of a blade, but a deep, throbbing ache, as if my very bones have been broken and reset wrong.
I try to move, to sit up, but my limbs are leaden. The sheet covering me is coarse, like wool, and it scratches against skin that feels too sensitive, too new.
“Easy.”
The voice is a low rumble. It vibrates in the floorboards, in the air, in my teeth. It is part of the landscape of this place. I force my eyes open again, blinking through the pain, letting the room swim into focus.
I am in a cabin. Rough-hewn wooden walls, a stone fireplace where embers glow softly. Simple. Rustic. Nothing like the sterile efficiency of the guild’s infirmary.
A man stands by the window, a silhouette against the blinding light. He is huge. Not just tall, but broad, a mountain of a man who makes the small cabin feel even smaller.
My hunter’s instincts, buried under layers of pain, flicker to life. Threat.
I try to reach for the blades that should be on my back. My hands find only empty air and the rough fabric of a simple tunic that is not mine. My weapons are gone. My armor is gone.
“Who are you?” My voice is a stranger’s, a gravelly rasp. “Where am I?”
He turns from the window, and the light spills around him. His face is all harsh lines and sharp angles, framed by dark hair that falls just past his jaw. His eyes… his eyes are the color of molten gold. I have seen those eyes before. In the forest. On wolves that were not just wolves.
“You are safe,” he says, his voice that same calm, deep rumble. “My name is Marcus.”
Marcus. The name means nothing to me. He is a werewolf. That is all that matters. My hand clenches into a fist on the rough blanket.
“Safe?” I scoff, the sound painful. “The last thing I remember is one of your kind tearing me apart.” The memory flashes, white-hot and terrible. Teeth and venom and failure. I instinctively reach for my shoulder. I expect to feel mangled flesh, torn muscle, shattered bone.
Instead, my fingers meet smooth, warm skin. Healed skin. There is a faint network of scars beneath the tunic, I can feel the raised lines, but the wound is gone. It is impossible. A wound like that… it would take months to heal, if it healed at all. The rogue’s bite is always fatal. Always.
“How?” The word is a whisper.
He walks closer. Every silent step he takes is a threat. I push myself up on my elbows, my body screaming in protest.
“The rogue’s venom was killing you,” he says, stopping a few feet from the bed. He does not seem to feel the need to fill the silence. He just watches me, his golden eyes unnervingly steady. “You were dying when I found you.”
“You’re lying.” It is a desperate denial. Hunters do not get saved by werewolves. We hunt them. We kill them. That is the order of things.
“Your heart had almost stopped,” he continues, his tone maddeningly patient. “The poison was in every part of you. There was only one way to burn it out. To save your life.”
My blood runs cold. A dawning, sickening horror creeps up my spine. I stare at him, at his calm face, at his predator’s eyes.
“What did you do to me?”
He holds my gaze. He does not flinch. He does not hesitate. “I turned you.”
The words hang in the air. They do not make sense. My mind rejects them, tries to push them away, but they sink into me like hooks.
Turned me.
Turned me.
Into one of them.
Laughter bubbles up in my throat, a hysterical, broken sound. “No. No, you’re lying. You’re a monster. Monsters don’t save people. They kill them.”
“The thing that attacked you was a monster,” he says, his voice hardening for the first time. “It was driven mad by your guild’s silver. That is not what I am. And it is not what you are now.”
“What I am now?” I spit the words like poison. “I am a hunter! I am a daughter of the guild!”
I throw the blanket off and swing my legs over the side of the bed. A wave of dizziness washes over me, and the world tilts, but I plant my feet on the cold floorboards. My body feels alien, a vessel I no longer command. There is a strange energy humming under my skin, a restless power that makes my muscles twitch.
“You violated me,” I whisper, the accusation raw with hatred. “You took my life and twisted it into this… this abomination.”
I look around the room, frantic now. I need a weapon. A piece of firewood. A loose stone from the hearth. Anything. My eyes land on an iron poker resting by the fire.
I lunge for it.
He moves so fast he is a blur. Before my fingers can even brush the iron, he is there, his body blocking my path. His hand closes around my wrist. It is not a violent grip, but it is absolute. Like being caught in a trap made of granite. The warmth of his skin is a shock, a brand against my own.
“Let go of me,” I snarl, trying to wrench my arm free. It is useless.
“Stop,” he says simply. “You are weak. You will only hurt yourself.”
Weak? The word ignites a firestorm in my chest. All of Jaxon’s taunts, my father’s disappointed silence, my own crushing failure. It all boils over into pure, undiluted rage.
“Weak?” I scream, and I swing at him with my free hand.
He catches that wrist too, just as easily. Now he holds both of my arms, his grip unyielding. I struggle, I twist, I kick, but it is like fighting against a mountain. I am a child throwing a tantrum. The humiliation is a fresh wave of agony.
This is not my body. My body is a weapon. Precise. Controlled. Deadly. This new body is a clumsy prison, filled with a chaotic strength I cannot begin to comprehend or control. My legs tremble and give out. He holds me up, his hands still locked on my wrists, forcing me to bear his scrutiny.
“I will kill you,” I gasp, my breath coming in ragged sobs of fury. “I swear it. I will hunt you down and every last one of your kind. I will burn this forest to the ground.”
“The hunter is still in there, I see,” he says, and his voice is low, almost thoughtful. It infuriates me even more. He is not afraid. He is not even angry. He is… curious. Like I am some strange new specimen he is studying.
“I am not one of you!” I shout in his face. His scent fills my head, overwhelming me. Pine and earth and something uniquely his. It is dizzying. Confusing. My heightened senses are a curse, turning this tiny room into a sensory torture chamber.
“Your blood says otherwise,” he says quietly. “Your heart beats with a new rhythm. Can you not feel it? The strength waiting for you? The life I gave you?”
“You gave me a death sentence,” I say, my voice dropping, venomous and low. “I would have rather died in that clearing than live as… this.”
He is silent for a long moment. I can feel the steady, powerful beat of his heart through his grip. It is the same one I heard when I woke up. The one that is not mine. It is the anchor in this storm.
“Your old life is over, Harper,” he says finally, and my name on his tongue feels like a brand. “That part of you died with the rogue’s venom.”
He releases one of my wrists, and before I can react, his fingers gently touch the pulse point on my neck. A jolt, like lightning, shoots through me. It is not pain. It is something else entirely. Something terrifyingly new.
“But you are alive,” he says, his golden eyes boring into mine. “I saved you. Whether you see that as a mercy or a curse is up to you.”
He lets go of my other wrist. I stumble back a step, catching myself on the edge of the bed. I am breathing hard, shaking with a mixture of rage and exhaustion. He has not harmed me, not really. But he has broken me more completely than the rogue ever could have.
He took away my failure and replaced it with a monstrous identity.
He turns and walks back to the window, leaving me trembling in the center of the room. Helpless. Furious. Alone with the thrum of unfamiliar power under my skin and the steady, resonant beat of his heart in my ears.
He has left me with a choice. But it feels like no choice at all. It feels like the end of the world. My world.
And the beginning of his.
