POV: Calla
The tree leaned toward me like it was listening.
I did not pull my hand back. I don't know why. Every part of my brain said to step away and the rest of me just stayed there with my palm flat against the warm bark and my heart very loud in my chest.
The tree stopped moving.
Then another one did. To my left. A slow tilt. Not falling. Just turning. Like a head turning to look at something.
I watched it.
"Calla."
Kael's voice came from behind me. Close. I turned and he was there at the edge of the small clearing, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
"Don't be afraid," he said.
"I'm not," I said.
He looked at my hand still pressed to the bark. Then at my face. Something moved in his eyes.
"I know," he said quietly. "That's what I thought."
He walked toward me slowly and stopped a few feet away. He looked at the trees around us. All of them were slightly angled now. All of them pointing inward. Toward me.
"They know you," he said.
"Trees don't know people."
"These ones do." He put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the canopy above. "This forest is not like other places. Selene made it. Grew it from the ground up over hundreds of years. It was her space. Her quiet. The one place she could go and not be anyone's goddess." He paused. "She put something of herself into every tree. Every root. Every stone."
I looked at the trunk under my hand.
"So when I touch it," I said slowly.
"It feels her. It feels you." He met my eyes. "To this forest you and Selene are the same person. Because you are."
I pulled my hand away from the bark.
The tree stayed leaning toward me even after I let go.
I turned and walked back toward the compound and Kael followed without being asked.
Inside he put water on to heat and I sat at the table and I did not look at the wall of carvings. I looked at my hands instead. They looked the same as they always had. Same short nails. Same small knuckles. Nothing about them looked like they belonged to a goddess.
"You said the forest was her quiet," I said. "Was she not allowed to be quiet."
Kael was quiet for a moment.
"Selene was loved by everyone," he said. "But being loved by everyone is its own kind of cage. They all needed something from her. Her blessing. Her power. Her approval." He set a cup in front of me. "In here she was just herself."
"And you," I said. "Were you one of the ones who needed something from her."
He sat down across from me. He looked at the table.
"I was her guardian," he said. "It was my duty to protect her."
"That's not what I asked."
He looked up. For a moment he said nothing. Then he said, "No. I never needed anything from her. I just wanted her to be safe."
I believed him. I didn't know why but I did.
I wrapped my hands around the warm cup and looked down at the water inside it.
That was when I felt it.
It was small. So small I almost missed it. A pull. Low in my chest, just under where my ribs met. Not pain. Not quite warmth. Something between the two. Like a coal that had been cold for a long time and had just found the first tiny breath of air.
I put my hand flat over my sternum.
"What," Kael said immediately. His eyes were on me.
"Something," I said. "I don't know. Something moved."
He went very still across the table. The way he went still was different from how other people went still. Most people froze. He just became very focused. All of him pointed in one direction.
"Describe it," he said.
"Like something waking up," I said. "Inside. Very small. Very deep."
He let out a slow breath.
"That," he said, "is your wolf."
I stared at him.
"I don't have a wolf."
"You have been told you don't have a wolf," he said. "That is different." He leaned forward. "Your wolf has been locked away since you were born. Sealed. What you just felt is the seal starting to crack."
I thought about the Moon Ceremony. About standing in that line watching every other girl glow with the thing I didn't have. The thing I had been told I was born without. The thing Darian had named me in front of the whole pack.
Wolfless.
The pull in my chest moved again. Stronger this time. Like something pressing outward from the inside. Slow and steady and very, very patient.
"It's been in there the whole time," I said.
"Yes."
"My whole life."
"Yes."
I sat with that for a moment. Twenty-one years of being called nothing. Twenty-one years of keeping my head up and my voice even and believing that maybe they were right, maybe there really was nothing inside me.
And there was something in there the whole time. Waiting. Locked in the dark. As patient as the man sitting across from me.
The pull moved a third time and this time it spread outward from my chest into my arms and down into my fingers and I felt the warmth of it reach the tips of my hands.
I looked down.
My fingertips were glowing. Faint and silver. So faint I wasn't sure I was seeing it right. I turned my hands over. The light was there. Soft. Real.
"Kael," I said.
"I see it."
"What do I do."
"Nothing," he said. "Don't push it. Don't pull it. Just let it be there."
I breathed out. The light stayed. Faint and silver at the ends of my fingers like moonlight had gotten under my skin.
And then something outside moved.
A sound. Low and far away. More than one set of feet. Moving through the trees.
Kael's head turned toward the door. His whole body changed. Not afraid. Ready.
"How many people know how to enter this forest," I said.
"No one," he said. "Except people the forest allows."
He stood up slowly.
The sounds got closer. Footsteps. Voices, low and careful. The kind of voices people use when they are trying not to be heard.
The kind of voices a search party uses.
Kael moved to the window and looked out. He said nothing for a moment.
Then he stepped back.
"There are six of them," he said.
My chest went tight.
"Pack," I said. Not a question.
"Yes."
I stood up and moved to the window.
Six figures moved between the black-bark trees at the edge of the clearing. Big. Careful. All of them in Vale pack colours.
And at the front, one step ahead of all the others, was a face I knew better than I wanted to.
Darian.
He stopped at the clearing's edge and looked up. His eyes found the compound. Then, slowly, they found the window.
They found me.