The Hunt in the Pines
The forest wasn't silent. It was listening.
Every breath Marina took came out sharp and white in the frozen air, puffing like smoke as she tore through the trees. Her boots sank into frost-crusted leaves, slipping on roots slick with ice, but she didn't dare stop. Branches clawed at her coat, thin fingers scratching down her arms and face as if trying to slow her.
Behind her, the sound wasn't footsteps. Not human ones.
Whatever followed her moved with the rhythm of the forest itself—heavier, deliberate, like it belonged here in a way she didn't.
The compass was gone, lost somewhere in the scramble. Her veins burned.
The low hum in her chest, once faint, now throbbed with every heartbeat, a relentless rhythm that sharpened her senses in ways she didn't understand. The forest stopped feeling like a blur of trees and shadows—it became alive in her head. The snow beneath her boots crunched in layers she could distinguish by weight and depth. The faint musk of fur carried on the wind, miles off, curled into her lungs like smoke. A branch snapped far to her left—not loud, but clear, like it was right beside her.
She wasn't just running anymore. She was sensing. Tracking.
And she hated it.
A flicker of movement caught her eye—something fast, impossibly fast, sliding through the shadows. Marina spun, her foot slipping, just as a massive weight slammed into the trunk of a nearby pine, shaking snow loose from its high branches.
A shape. Humanoid, but wrong. Shoulders too broad, limbs bending at angles they shouldn't. She caught the gleam of its eyes—bright, feral gold—before it darted back into the trees, vanishing like it had never been there.
Her body moved before her mind caught up.
A sound—a growl—rumbled low from her throat, so foreign it startled her. Her nails scraped down the bark of the nearest tree, and the wood didn't just scratch. It splintered.
Her fingers weren't fingers anymore.
The hum in her chest deepened, rising into a roar that swallowed the panic clawing at her throat. Her vision sharpened to a cutting edge, her limbs suddenly light, strong, like her body had shed something human.
Then a hand caught her wrist.
"Stop."
Kael.
His grip was like iron, his face shadowed but taut with tension. His chest rose and fell in quick, hard breaths, his eyes glowing faintly in the dark as he pulled her back against him.
"Don't move," he hissed. "It's not after you. Not yet."
The growl came again, this time so low the ground itself seemed to vibrate with it. The thing in the shadows was circling. Waiting for the moment she'd break.
Kael's hand tightened on her wrist. "Listen to me, Marina, don't lose control. If you do, they'll smell it. They'll know."
Before she could respond, the air shifted. The shadows around them seemed to twitch—and then the creature lunged.
Kael was gone in a blur of motion, colliding with the beast in a spray of snow and dirt. The impact cracked like a snapped tree limb, the sound carrying through the trees as they tumbled into a violent tangle of claws, fists, and teeth. Marina staggered back against a tree, her body trembling as the glow beneath her skin flared brighter, her breath coming in ragged bursts. The hum in her chest broke into a pounding pulse that drowned out everything—the wind, the fight, even her thoughts.
Only one urge cut through the chaos, sharp and unrelenting:
Run or change.
Her fingertips dug deep into the bark, clawing through it as though it were soft clay. Her vision blurred, her pulse doubled—and then she felt it.
Another heartbeat.
Not hers.
Hot, close, a rhythm brushing the air at her neck.
Slowly, she turned.
A figure stood half-hidden in the shadows, close enough that their breath fogged in the cold between them. Not a creature, not a beast—human. Or close enough to look like one. Their eyes glowed faintly, pale gold, but softer than the predator's. Curious.
They didn't attack. Didn't move. Just watched.
Then the figure tilted their head, a smile flickering across their lips, sharp and wrong.
"You're not ready to choose," they whispered, voice soft enough that Kael couldn't hear over the chaos behind them. "But you will. Soon."
Before Marina could speak, they melted back into the shadows as if the trees had swallowed them whole.
The hum in her chest snapped taut, a violent pulse of heat ripping through her body.
She dropped to her knees, clutching at the snow, but her scream didn't come out as a scream.
It tore through the forest in a sound that wasn't human anymore.
A howl.