The forest pressed in around him, a suffocating cage of shadows and sound. Adam's chest heaved as his thoughts clashed like storm-tossed waves, leave her or save her. His legs trembled with the instinct to run, yet his heart wouldn't let him. That white wolf, the same one who had haunted his nights, who had both protected him and threatened him, was seconds from being ripped apart.
And worse of all, he felt this gnawing familiarity to her. But he couldn't move.
His eyes darted across the blood-streaked ground, landing on the sprawled body of a soldier. The man's chest had been torn open like paper, ribs glistening in the thin light. Adam swallowed the bile rising in his throat as his gaze shifted to the weapon still clutched loosely in the corpse's hand. A shotgun. Black pump-action, matte finish glinting faintly where moonlight and phone light caught it.
Adam's breath hitched. His palms went clammy. It wasn't his first time using a gun. But he never had to use one under pressure, especially when his life depended on it. And yet now, here he was, and the shot gun, made of cold steel, smeared with blood, waited for him.
"Damn it…" he whispered, his own voice shaky in the chaos of snarls and snapping jaws behind him.
He crouched down beside the soldier, every nerve in his body screaming at him to hurry. The smell hit him first, copper and rot, blood soaking the soil beneath the corpse. His fingers trembled as he pried the weapon free from stiff, cooling hands. For a second, he thought he saw the soldier's eyes flicker open, just a trick of his panic, but it froze his blood all the same.
The shotgun was as heavy as he expected, weighty with purpose and death. He was used to guns feeling… cleaner, mechanical. Instead, this one felt dirty. Slick patches of blood clung to the grip, and when Adam's fingers wrapped around it, the reality of what he was about to do pressed into his skin.
Behind him, a snarl tore through the night, feral, guttural, vibrating through his chest. Adam's head whipped around.
The black werewolf had the white one pinned, jaws tearing deeper into her shoulder. Her howl split the forest, raw with agony, echoing across the trees like a cry from some ancient battlefield.
She thrashed under its bulk, claws digging deep into the soil, fighting to hold back the monster's weight. But Adam could see it in her, the weakness creeping in, the blood pouring fast. Her silver fur was matted dark, glistening red where the moonlight kissed it.
His stomach twisted. If he ran now, she would die.
Adam pulled the shotgun closer, fumbling to check it. He yanked the fore-end back. The metallic clack-chack split the night like thunder, a shell ejecting onto the leaves with a dull thud. Loaded. His pulse spiked, fear mixing with adrenaline.
He steadied the barrel, though his hands shook so violently the sight wavered between the two beasts.
"This is insane…" he muttered through clenched teeth.
His ears rang with every sound: the rasp of his breath, the clash of claws, the guttural growls that vibrated in his chest more than his ears. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath around him, waiting.
Adam rose to his feet, boots sinking into damp leaves. He took one shaky step forward. The shotgun's weight dug into his shoulder as he lifted it, barrel pointing toward the black monster. His throat tightened, heart hammering so loud he swore it would give him away.
The wolf's head snapped up. Blood dripped from its jaws, hot steam curling in the night air as its glowing eyes locked onto him.
Adam froze. His whole body went cold, every instinct screaming, Don't. Don't pull the trigger. Run. Hide.
And yet his finger found the trigger.
The white wolf beneath the beast let out another strangled cry, clawing desperately, her lone arm shaking with the effort to hold those jaws from her throat. Adam's vision tunneled. He wasn't even sure he was breathing anymore. The only thing he could feel was the weight of the gun and the raw urgency blazing inside him.
He inhaled sharply, steadying as best as he could.
Then—
BOOM!
The blast ripped through the night, shattering the silence of the forest. The recoil slammed into his shoulder, nearly knocking him backward. His ears rang with the echo, his hands numb from the jolt. For a heartbeat, he couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't even tell if he had hit his mark.
***
Martha Ellery had never known peace inside the Thorne estate. She had been born into servitude, her mother before her, her grandmother before that. The Thornes did not keep humans as slaves, not exactly, but the difference was little more than a word game. To disobey was to die. To speak out was to invite pain.
She had once dreamed of a different life: a bakery in the village, sunlight on her face, the smell of bread and cinnamon filling her lungs instead of the constant sharp tang of wet stone and blood. But dreams were for people who were free. For Martha, there was only obedience. Only survival.
And survival in this instant meant keeping her distance as Elizabeth Thorne, in her wolf form, tore through her daughter.
The courtyard had been a place of beauty once. The wide garden patio stretched in pale sandstone tiles, polished and warm in the daytime sun. Fountains murmured, roses climbed along marble arches. Tonight, all of it was reduced to rubble in moments.
Amber's black form, her white underbelly catching the lantern glow, crumpled under the grey fury of Elizabeth. Amber pleaded in ragged yelps that echoed like a child's cries, but Elizabeth did not relent.
"Mercy?" Elizabeth's voice, half-snarl, half-growl, rattled the stone. "You dropped a trinket that cost us our secrecy, and now Hawkings nips at our heels like a dog. Do you even grasp what you've done?"
Amber whimpered, pawing at the ground. She tried to dart left. Elizabeth's fist came down like a hammer. The patio wall behind Amber exploded in a cloud of stone and dust. The sheer force of the strike left Martha's knees trembling.
It wasn't a fight. It was an execution stretched out to make a point.
Elizabeth seized Amber by the scruff of her neck and flung her as though she were nothing more than a rag doll. Amber's body crashed into the side of the mansion with a booming crack. The wall caved inward, beams snapping like twigs. Stones rained down. Martha flinched as rubble skittered across the ground near her boots.
And yet, Amber staggered back up. Broken, bloodied, but standing. Martha could only marvel in a horrid awe. No human could withstand that kind of impact. No human could walk away from it.
Beside the wreckage, Abigail, her knees planted firmly in the dirt, raised her head. Anissa, knelt at her side, both in human form, her hand resting anxiously on her sister's shoulder. Abigail's eyes burned with defiance.
"Mother," Abigail shouted, "if anyone is to take blame, let it be me. Amber didn't—"
Her words were cut short. Elizabeth didn't even wait. With a roar, she hurled Abigail across the courtyard with a single sweep of her massive claw. The force rippled the air itself. Martha felt it in her chest like the thump of thunder.
Abigail's body shot backward, carving a trail through the grass before colliding with two towering oak trees. They splintered, cracked, and exploded in a shower of wooden shards. The shockwave knocked Martha backward onto her hands. For a moment, she couldn't breathe.
Abigail tumbled across the ground, dust and bark clinging to her. She rose slowly, faltering, her hand pressed tight against her side. Even from a distance, Martha saw the blood soaking through her gown. Yet she stood. She endured.
Martha's stomach knotted with something that was not quite admiration and not quite fear, it was both. She would never understand the strength that flowed in the veins of the Thorne bloodline or any werewolf in that matter. To be human here was to be reminded, constantly, how utterly fragile one was.
Elizabeth turned, her towering grey form radiating fury. "How many times," she snarled, "must I tell you to stop defending incompetence?"
Her eyes glowed like burning coals, a red brilliance that cut through the haze of dust and ruin. Martha felt herself shrinking under that gaze, though it was not aimed at her.
And then, with a sickening series of cracks, Elizabeth began to shrink. Fur receded, bones snapping and reshaping, until at last she stood once more in human form, naked, her body glistening with sweat. In the chill of the damp night, faint trails of steam curled from her skin, rising like smoke from a cooling blade fresh out of the forge. Even stripped bare, she radiated an aura so commanding, so dangerous, that Martha's mouth went dry.
On cue, the servants rushed forward. Martha among them. She moved with the others, trembling hands extending a robe of deep crimson silk, her eyes lowered. To hesitate would mean death.
Elizabeth snatched the robe, her jaw tight, her movements sharp. Even wrapped in finery, she was terrifying. The red in her eyes hadn't dimmed, it glowed, as though her grief had fused with rage until it became something uncontainable.
Martha dared a glance at her face. And in that fleeting moment, she realized this fury wasn't only about Amber's mistake. No, there was grief there, raw and unburied. Sebastian Thorne's absence was a wound she poured her wrath into, and her children had become her punching bag.
Elizabeth's voice rang out, clipped and deadly. "I want the back compound repaired. The patio, the fountains, all of it, rebuilt by Monday. If it isn't, you'll wish you'd never been born."
"Yes, my lady," Martha and the others murmured in unison, heads bowed.
Elizabeth pivoted, her gaze slicing through the night toward three guards at the edge of the ruin. "Hawkings," she hissed. "Find him. Watch for your opening. When it comes… snip the life out of him. Leave nothing. Do not be seen."
The guards bowed low, their silhouettes sharp against the fractured walls.
Martha stood frozen, her heart pounding in her chest. Around her, fountains lay shattered, their marble angels cracked and bleeding streams of water into the dirt. The once-proud compound was in ruins. And she. She was nothing but a witness. A human mouse in the shadow of wolves.
She longed for another life. One where she wasn't forced to watch children beaten like disobedient dogs, where her days weren't spent under the threat of death. But she knew better. Dreams meant nothing here. Obedience was survival.
And so she bowed her head, swallowed the ache in her throat, and whispered with the others:
"Yes, my lady."