The first light of dawn was a cruel, thin thing. It didn't bring warmth; it only revealed the wreckage of the night. In the sub-basement of the ranger station, the silence was no longer heavy it was hollow.
Clara's voice was gone, reduced to a dry rasp after hours of reading to the steel. Her back was a map of aches from leaning against the cold wall. When she finally heard the sound of heavy iron chains sliding against concrete, she stood up, her legs nearly giving way.
"Reid?" she whispered.
There was a long pause. Then, a voice that sounded like it had been dragged through broken glass. "Open... the door."
Clara slid the heavy bolts back. The steel door, now permanently warped by the force of the night's violence, groaned on its hinges. She pushed it open just enough to slip inside.
The smell hit her first, the scent of a wet forest, of copper, and of an overwhelming, feverish heat. Reid was slumped in the center of the room. He was naked, his human skin pale and covered in a fine sheen of sweat and road-grime. The shackles were still around his ankles, but the iron was bent, the bolts in the floor slightly unearthed.
He looked at her, and Clara's heart broke. His eyes were human again, but they were filled with a shame so deep it was hard to look at. He looked like a man who had survived his own execution.
"I didn't... I didn't break them," he whispered, looking at the chains.
"You stayed," Clara said, crossing the room and dropping to her knees beside him. She wrapped the heavy wool blanket she had brought around his shaking shoulders. "You stayed right here."
Reid leaned his head against her chest, and she felt the frantic, rhythmic thud of his heart slowing down. "I heard you," he murmured. "In the dark. I didn't know the words... but I knew the sound. I knew it was the way home."
The tenderness of the moment was shattered by the sound of sirens above. Not the local police these were different. Sharper.
"Miller," Reid said, pulling back, his eyes sharpening with a sudden, weary clarity. "He saw the door. He saw the strength of what was inside. He's not going to let this go, Clara. He thinks he's protecting the town."
"We have to get you out of here," Clara said, helping him stand. "If they find you like this"
"They won't find me," Reid said. He stood up, his muscles trembling but his resolve hardening. He looked at the warped door. "But I can't stay in Oakhaven. Not anymore. Silas was right about one thing the town and the wolf can't occupy the same space without someone getting killed."
They made it back to the cabin under the cover of the morning fog, taking the back fire-roads that only a ranger would know. As they pulled into the clearing, Clara saw the damage.
The front porch had been ransacked. Her father's journals were scattered in the dirt, some of them torn to shreds. On the front door, a mark had been carved a jagged, stylized wolf's head.
"Silas," Reid growled. "He's marking his territory. He's telling the town that I'm one of them, and he's telling me that I belong to the ridge."
Clara began to pick up the journals, her fingers trembling. "He's trying to isolate you. He wants you to have nowhere to go but to him."
"It's working," Reid said, looking toward the town. From their vantage point on the hill, they could see black smoke rising.
"What is that?" Clara asked.
"The hunters," Reid said, his voice flat. "They're burning the brush on the lower ridge to smoke out the pack. They don't realize they're just making the wolves angry. And a wolf with nowhere to hide is the most dangerous thing on earth."
They went inside, and Reid moved with a frantic energy, grabbing a bag and filling it with supplies ammunition, dried meat, a map.
"What are you doing?" Clara asked.
"I'm going to find him," Reid said. "I'm going to end this before Miller and his men get themselves slaughtered. Silas is baiting them into the deep woods. He's going to lead them to the 'Hollow,' and if they go in there, none of them are coming back."
"I'm coming with you," Clara said.
"No, Clara. This isn't a poem. This isn't a book you can mend." He turned to her, taking her face in his hands. His touch was firm, desperate. "You've seen the best of me, and you've seen the worst. But the thing in the woods today... that's the family business. I have to do this alone."
"You think you're protecting me by leaving me here?" Clara's voice rose, a flash of her father's stubbornness in her eyes. "If you go into those woods and you don't come back, I'm alone anyway. I'd rather be at your side than waiting for a phone call that never comes."
Reid looked at her, and for a moment, the "human" won. He saw the woman who had sat by a steel door all night, who had looked at his monstrous reflection and didn't blink.
"It's a long hike," he said, a ghost of a smile appearing. "And it's going to be cold."
"I have my father's boots," she said. "And I have you."
As they left the cabin, the wind picked up, carrying the scent of smoke and the distant, rhythmic beat of a hunt. They weren't just walking into the woods; they were walking into the heart of the Blackwood legacy.
And in the shadows of the old-growth firs, Silas was waiting, watching his brother bring the one thing he had always envied a reason to remain a man.