“Help! Somebody-please!”
I startled, wiping at my eyes.
It came from deeper in the woods, and instinct overrode all else.
I rose and followed the sound until I stumbled upon a steep incline where an elderly woman had slipped.
She clung to a jutting root, her basket of herbs scattered down the slope.
“Shit-hold on!” I called out.
Without thinking, I scrambled down, mud streaking my jeans.
Carefully, I crouched low, planting my boots against a stone for balance. I reached for her, bracing myself against the incline as my hand found hers.
Her hands trembled in mine, paper-thin but strong enough to grip. Slowly, inch by inch, I guided her upward, the mud giving way beneath her shoes as she leaned heavily into me.
When at last her feet found solid ground, I pulled her the final step, and she collapsed lightly against me, her breath shaky, her weight surprisingly featherlike.
When she was safe, she wheezed out a laugh, brushing dirt from her dress. “Thank you, child. I’d have broken my neck down there.”
I managed a weak smile. “It’s nothing. Are you hurt?”
“Just my pride.” Her gaze, sharp and clear despite her age, swept over me.
Then her expression softened. “But you-you’re the one who looks hurt.”
DR IS
“Oh no.” I spread my arms to show her I was unharmed. “I’m fine.”
“No.” She tapped her temple. “You’re heavy here”-then her heart-“and here. I can feel it.”
I tensed, my defenses reflexively slamming up. “I’m fine,” I repeated tightly.
“Oh, child,” she said softly, brushing her fingers against my cheek. “There is no loss greater than that which you barely had.”
My chest clenched, a tremor running through me.
Something in her certainty unmoored me. As if she could see right through me, like she knew exactly what I was going through.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as my tongue loosened. “I…I feel like I’m chasing shadows. I feel…a connection, and I know it’s there. But now it’s gone and I feel like I made it all up and…”
I exhaled. Did she even understand what I was saying-I barely did myself. “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”
The woman tilted her head. “I sense a power inside you, child. An energy within that doesn’t vanish-it only hides. Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because pain blinds more than darkness does. Hurt clouds the heart, tricks the senses. You have immense strength inside you, girl, but it flickers because you don’t trust it. You don’t trust yourself.”
Her words slid under my skin like balm and blade at once.
“When you can stop being misled by appearances, when you learn not to let old wounds sway you,” she continued, her eyes glinting strangely in the half-light, “then your wolf will answer. Not as a dream. As truth.”
I swallowed hard, breath catching. “How…how do you know this?”
She only smiled. “I’ve seen many girls like you. Some rise. Some falter. The difference is not fate-it’s patience.”
Patience.
I pressed my hands together, forcing myself to breathe. Slowly. Deliberately. In. Out. In. Out.
I reached inward again, and this time, beneath the noise of doubt, I felt it. A flicker. Faint as a candle flame in a storm, but…there.
A tremor of awareness brushed my skin. The forest brightened slightly, edges gaining a clarity that wasn’t only in my eyes but in my blood.
Not as sharp as before, not as steady-but enough.
My chest flooded with relief. I wasn’t completely lost. I could do this.
I opened my eyes to thank her, but-
The old woman was gone.
No footsteps. No rustle of fabric. Just the whisper of wind through leaves.
I spun in a circle, heart pounding. “Hello?”
Nothing.
Had she ever been there? Or had she been some figment of my desperation? Or-something else entirely?
The thought made my skin prickle.
Either way, I straightened my shoulders. Whoever she was, she was right.
I’d nearly forgotten patience. Forgotten that strength wasn’t born in a single night but in the thousand times you choose to stand again.
I knew that better than anyone else.
The months at OTS hadn’t been wasted. I was stronger now than I’d ever been. This-this was only a setback.
And I would endure it, as I had endured everything else before now.
***
By the time I left the forest, the sky had bruised into evening purple.
But something in me was reluctant to leave the comfort of nature. So I walked, letting my feet carry me where they pleased.
I wandered into a small park quite a distance from my house.
At first, I wondered what brought me here-but then I recognized the oak trees that fringed the perimeter, the swings that swayed gently in the evening breeze, the duck pond at the far end.
I was in Daniel’s favorite park.
Nostalgia and memories rushed me: his laughter as he darted ahead, the way he’d begged me to push him higher on the swing.
My chest ached with longing.
I pulled out my phone, intending to record a short video for him, maybe by our old bench. Something to let him know I was thinking of him.
But then I froze.
Because sitting on our bench, staring wistfully ahead of him, was Kieran.
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SERAPHINA’S POV
The moment my gaze landed on him, the good mood I’d fought so hard for scattered like startled birds.
It was almost cruel, how quickly the lightness in my chest dimmed.
One second, I’d been clutching Daniel’s memory close, imagining the way his laughter might sound if he were here with me, and the next-there was Kieran.
Other than that ridiculous drunken phone call and the brief clash in Celeste’s hospital room, I’d been doing really well with avoiding Kieran, and I wasn’t interested in breaking that streak anytime soon.
I pivoted slightly, intent on leaving and vanishing back into the quiet of the trees. That was when his voice carried across the park.
“Sera.”
I froze. Something in his tone-steady, gentle, almost…careful-made my stomach turn. I should have kept walking, but against my better judgment, I looked back.
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