Ren stared at the empty treeline.
The ferns were still swaying where he had stood. Then they went still too.
"Ren?" Kael's arms tightened around her.
Ren didn't answer. Her brain was too busy flipping back through the last day and night, page by page, like a cookbook she had been reading upside down.
The tiger had turned his nose up at vegetables. He had eaten his rabbit in small, polite bites. He had tilted his head when she called him Mittens, as if he had never heard the word in his life.
Because he hadn't.
And the scar. That round, pink scar right in the center of his chest.
She knew exactly where a scar like that came from. She had been standing right there when he made it.
'Oh no,' Ren thought. 'Oh no, no, no.'
Around them, the village had gone quiet. The cubs clinging to her legs were looking up at Kael's face. Barnaby had stopped chewing. Even the Caretakers had stopped scolding.
"Not here," Ren said quietly. "Put me down, Kael. Please."
