"You hear her?" Beckett asked. His voice was a hush that belonged to the trees more than to him.
Magnolia didn't turn. "She's closer now."
Beckett huffed a sound that might've been a laugh if it weren't so full of teeth. "She's the bait."
"No," Magnolia said. Her boots crunched over a half-buried root, the frost biting through her soles. "I am."
The trees thickened the deeper they went. Old pines gave way to birch stands that creaked in the wind, trunks bent like crooked spines under the weight of centuries. Magnolia touched her palm to one as they passed, the bark cold and slick with meltwater.
The hush behind it pressed close , too close. Her wolf bristled, pacing the edge of her mind. Beckett stepped up beside her, his shadow bleeding into hers on the snow.
"Why here?" he asked.
Magnolia closed her eyes. Camille's echo drifted just ahead , laughter that caught on the wind like smoke from a pyre that never burned clean.
