Derek stepped out of the trees to her left as if the shadows themselves had decided to take shape.
He wore the leather jacket again, dark jeans, boots that made almost no sound on the leaf litter.
His hair was slightly damp, as though he had recently showered, and the scent that reached her on the cooling air was the same clean wildness she had come to recognize: pine, smoke, and something metallic just beneath.
He stopped a short distance away, eyes already carrying that faint gold undercurrent.
“You came,” he said.
“I said I would.”
He studied her for a long moment, gaze moving from her face to the pack on her shoulders and back again.
“You armed?”
Allison touched the side pocket where the silver knife rested.
“Yes.”
“Good.
Keep it close.
And stay near me.
No wandering off to take notes or photographs.
Clear?”
“Clear.”
He nodded once and turned toward the deeper woods beyond the oak.
Allison followed.
The trail here was faint, more suggestion than path.
Derek moved with the absolute certainty of someone who needed no markers.
She matched his pace as best she could, aware of every place the undergrowth brushed her legs, every shift of air that carried his scent back to her.
They walked in silence for nearly twenty minutes.
The light continued to drain from the sky.
The almost-full moon had begun to rise, a pale coin climbing through the bare upper branches.
Its light silvered the ground in patches and left the rest in deeper shadow.
Derek finally stopped in a small natural clearing where the trees drew back enough to let the moonlight pool.
He turned to face her.
“This is as far as most humans ever come and still walk out again,” he said.
“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave these woods.
You write it, you speak it in town, and you become a problem I will have to solve.
Allison met his eyes.
“I understand.”
He exhaled slowly, as if releasing a decision he had already made days ago.
“There is a pack in these mountains.
Wolves that are not only wolves.
I am their alpha.
We have lived alongside the town for generations under an old agreement: stay out of sight, take nothing that belongs to the human world, and the humans look the other way when something unexplainable happens.
That agreement is fraying.”
Allison’s pulse had picked up.
She kept her voice steady.
“Because of the thing that’s been taking people.”
“Yes.
It is older than the pack.
Older than the treaty.
It wakes when the moon swells in autumn, and it hunts for strength.
It does not kill cleanly.
It takes what it needs and leaves the rest broken.
The hikers were not random.
They were tests.
Probes.
It has been circling closer to the pack’s territory every night.”
“And the claw marks that aren’t yours.”
Derek’s mouth tightened.
“It’s.
It can wear shapes.
Sometimes the shapes of what it has already taken.
That is why the reports never match any known animal.”
Allison absorbed the words.
The rest of her, the part that had felt the gold in his eyes and the heat of his body, already believed him.
“Why tell me this?” she asked.
“Because you would not stop.
And because the thing has noticed you.
The notes under your door were not from any human in town.” His gaze sharpened.
“It is trying to separate you from me.
To make you doubt.
To draw you out alone.”
A cold thread slid down Allison’s spine.
“The notes said you wouldn’t protect me.”
“I will.” The two words were absolute.
“But only if you stay where I can reach you.
No more solo trail walks.
No more digging in places the sheriff has already warned you away from.
You want the truth, you have it.
Now you live with the consequences.”
The moon had climbed higher.
Its light caught the edges of Derek’s face and turned his eyes fully gold for a breath.
Allison felt the air between them change, thicken, charge, become something that had little to do with the creature in the woods and everything to do with the man standing in front of her.
“You’re close to the Change,” she said softly.
Derek’s jaw flexed.
“The moon is almost full.
Control costs more every night.
And you…” He took one step closer.
“You make it cost more.”
Allison did not step back.
“Then stop pretending you don’t want me here.”
Something in his expression fractured.
The gold flared brighter.
For a second, the forest itself seemed to lean in around them.
Then he moved.