The deeper they moved into the old-growth forest, the more the world seemed to lose its color. Here, the trees were so ancient and thick that the sun was merely a suggestion, filtered through layers of lichen and mist. This was the "Hollow," a geological scar in the ridge where the rules of the town felt like a fever dream.
Reid moved differently here. He didn't walk like a ranger anymore; he moved like a predator, his feet finding silence in the dried needles, his head constantly tracking the shifts in the wind. Clara followed in his wake, her breath pluming in the cold air, feeling the weight of the forest pressing in on her chest.
"The air is metallic," Clara whispered, her hand brushing a cedar trunk that felt unnervingly warm.
"Blood and iron," Reid replied without looking back. "The pack has been here. They don't just live here, Clara. They claim it. They rub their scent into the sap. They've turned this place into a cathedral of the kill."
They reached a clearing where the trees had been twisted by some prehistoric wind, forming a natural amphitheater of gnarled wood. Standing in the center was a small group four or five people. They didn't look like monsters. They looked like the forgotten: a young girl in a tattered sun dress, an old man with eyes the color of cataracts, a woman with a scar that ran from her temple to her throat.
But as Clara and Reid approached, the group didn't turn their heads. They turned their entire bodies, moving with a synchronized, liquid lethality.
"Reidie," Silas's voice drifted down from a high ledge. He was perched on a fallen fir, looking down at them like a bored king. "You brought the librarian. I'm impressed. I didn't think you had it in you to share the secrets of the hearth."
"The hunt is coming, Silas," Reid said, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous vibrato. "Miller has twenty men with high-powered rifles and dogs. They're burning the ridge. They'll be here by sunset."
Silas laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over stone. "Let them come. We've been waiting for a reason to remind Oakhaven why they used to leave offerings at the treeline. The town has forgotten fear, brother. We're going to reintroduce it."
The woman with the scar took a step toward Clara, her nostrils flaring. "She smells like paper," she hissed. "And old dust. She smells like a life spent sitting down."
"She smells like the man I chose to be," Reid snapped, stepping in front of Clara. "And if you touch her, Martha, I will remind you why I'm the one who survived the cellar for ten years while you all ran wild."
The tension in the clearing was a physical thing, a cord stretched to the point of snapping. The "pack" looked at Reid with a mixture of hatred and grudging respect. He was the anomaly the one who could bridge the worlds, the one who held onto the "human" with a grip of iron.
"You think you're better than us," the old man wheezed, his voice a rattling cage. "But you're the most miserable one here, Reid. You spend every day mourning a man who is already dead. The wolf is your skin. The man is just the bruise."
"Enough!" Silas shouted, leaping down from the ledge with a grace that made Clara's heart stop. He landed inches from Reid, the two brothers standing chest-to-chest. "The town is coming to kill us, Reid. They don't distinguish between the ranger and the rogue. To them, we're all just fur and teeth. So, here's the choice. You stand with us and defend the Hollow, or you stay in the middle and get caught in the crossfire."
Reid looked at his brother, and for the first time, Clara saw a flicker of pity in his eyes. "There doesn't have to be a crossfire, Silas. Tell the pack to scatter. Go north into the high Cascades. They'll never find you there."
"And leave our home?" Silas sneered. "No. I want them to see us. I want Miller to look into my eyes before I rip the throat out of his deputy."
Clara stepped forward, her voice trembling but loud enough to command the clearing. "Silas, you're not defending a home. You're defending a cage. You're so afraid of being human that you've turned yourself into a nightmare just so you don't have to feel the loneliness."
The silence that followed was absolute. Silas turned his gaze to Clara, his golden eyes narrowing. He moved toward her, his face inches from hers, his breath smelling of raw earth.
"You're very brave for a girl who's made of glass," Silas whispered. "But do you know what happens to glass when it meets the wolf? It shatters. And the wolf doesn't even feel the cuts."
"I'm not glass," Clara said, her gaze steady. "I'm the one who knows how to put things back together. And you, Silas... you're the only thing here that can't be fixed."
Silas snarled, his upper lip curling to reveal teeth that were already lengthening. But before he could strike, the distant, muffled boom of a shotgun echoed through the trees. Then another. And another.
The dogs were barking not the low, steady baying of a hunt, but the frantic, panicked yelps of animals that had realized too late they were the ones being hunted.
"They're here," Martha whispered, her eyes lighting up with a terrifying hunger.
"To the ridge!" Silas roared, his body already beginning to distort, his bones shifting under his skin with sickening cracks. "Show them the price of the flame!"
The pack vanished into the brush, a blur of gray and brown. Reid turned to Clara, his face a mask of grief and determination.
"They're going to kill each other," Reid said. "Miller's men don't know what they're walking into, and Silas won't stop until there's no one left to tell the story."
"What do we do?" Clara asked.
Reid looked at his hands, which were starting to tremble. The moon was still hours away, but the violence in the air was acting like a catalyst. "I have to stop the hunt. I have to get between them. Clara, you have to go back to the fire-road. If you hear me howl... don't look back."
"Reid"
"I love you," he said, the words sounding like a final confession. "I've spent my whole life being afraid of what I am. But being with you... it's the only time I've ever been proud of the man who fights it."
He kissed her, a hard, desperate pressure, and then he was gone, moving through the trees with a speed that left her alone in the sudden, terrifying silence of the Hollow.
Clara stood there for a moment, the taste of him still on her lips, and then she looked at the heavy leather bag of her father's notes. She didn't turn back toward the fire-road. She turned toward the sound of the guns.