They were still close to camp when a low growl rolled out of the trees, deep enough that Aldrien felt it in his chest before he consciously registered the sound.
He was on his feet instantly, every instinct sharpening at once.
Hazel’s wolf sensed it too, some current of warning passing through him before the rogue ever stepped into view.
Hazel reacted differently.
She had Aldrien’s strength, his size, his entire physical presence wrapped around her, and none of it made her feel any safer.
The rogue emerged from the treeline, teeth bared, and Hazel froze completely.
Then she screamed.
She stumbled backward and actually ducked behind a tree, pressing herself against the bark like it might somehow make her disappear.
Aldrien stared at her.
“Hazel.”
“Kill it!”
“You’re in my body.”
“I KNOW!”
The rogue lunged before either of them could sort out anything further, and Aldrien moved on pure instinct, putting himself between the animal and the tree Hazel was hiding behind.
He didn’t have his usual strength anymore, trapped as he was in a body considerably smaller and less suited for this kind of fight, but the combat instincts were still his, sharpened over years of training that hadn’t disappeared just because the body carrying them had changed.
He fought smart instead of hard, using speed and positioning rather than force he simply didn’t have access to.
Hazel’s wolf helped where it could, reacting a beat faster than Aldrien’s own reflexes managed on their own.
It was messy.
The rogue caught his forearm with a glancing swipe that tore through fabric and skin, and every time the animal got close, Hazel let out another scream from behind the tree.
It should have been funny, watching the woman currently occupying his own powerful frame shrieking in terror while he fought in a body half its size.
Somewhere underneath the chaos, though, it landed differently.
Hazel eventually forced herself out from behind the tree, some mix of shame and desperation pushing her forward.
She had the stronger body, technically, and she tried to use it, swinging at the rogue with movements that were awkward at best, unfamiliar with the reach and weight she was working with.
She nearly threw herself off balance entirely.
“Stay behind me!” Aldrien snapped.
She actually listened.
That struck him even in the middle of the fight, how rare it was for Hazel to simply do what he told her without an argument trailing behind it, and how completely she did it now, retreating a step and letting him hold the ground between her and the rogue.
The animal lunged again, and just as Aldrien braced for the impact, an arrow cut through the air and buried itself in the rogue’s side.
It dropped instantly.
A hunter stepped out from the trees, older, weathered, moving with the kind of ease that suggested he’d done this more times than he could count.
He looked at the dead rogue first, then at Aldrien, standing there in Hazel’s body with an arm bleeding and an expression far too composed for someone who’d just been fighting for his life.
Then his eyes moved to Hazel, still partly hidden behind him, wearing Aldrien’s broad shoulders and looking thoroughly shaken.
His expression shifted through several stages at once.
Confusion.
Suspicion.
Something close to disbelief.
“What in the Moon Goddess’s name are you two doing?”
Neither of them had an answer that wouldn’t unravel everything they’d been so carefully protecting.
The hunter kept studying them, and the longer he looked, the more his confusion sharpened into something else entirely.
The woman, standing there in front of the man, positioned like she’d been the one protecting him.
The man, clearly the physically imposing one of the pair, visibly rattled and hanging back.
He turned his attention to Hazel, still wearing Aldrien’s face, and his expression curdled into open scorn.
“You call yourself a man?”
Aldrien looked like he was fighting very hard not to laugh, which only made Hazel glare at him harder, though there wasn’t much she could say in her own defense without explaining something far more complicated than either of them was prepared to get into.
The hunter didn’t seem inclined to trust them regardless, and he told them, gruff and matter-of-fact, that more rogues were likely deeper in the Wildwood, that traveling alone through this stretch of forest wasn’t something anyone with sense attempted without a place to hole up for the night.
He had a cabin not far from here.
They should follow him.
Hazel hesitated, glancing at Aldrien.
“We need somewhere safe tonight,” he said quietly, low enough that only she could hear it.
The hunter had already started walking, and after a moment they fell into step behind him.
He glanced back once, his gaze landing on Hazel with the same contempt as before.
“And try not to let your wife fight your battles for you.”
Hazel’s mouth opened, ready to say something she’d probably regret, but Aldrien caught her arm before she could get a word out, steering her forward instead.
They followed the hunter deeper into the trees, and once they’d put enough distance between themselves and him, Hazel leaned in and muttered, “I hate him.”
Aldrien glanced at her.
“Me?”
“No. The hunter.”
A pause.
“Good,” he said.
They walked on in silence after that, the forest closing in around them on either side, and Hazel found herself replaying the fight in her head.
Aldrien hadn’t hesitated.
He’d stepped in front of her without a second of doubt, in a body that wasn’t even built for the kind of strength he was used to relying on, and he’d done it without thinking twice.
For once, she wasn’t dwelling on how strange the whole situation was, how absurd it looked from the outside, two people wearing each other’s bodies stumbling through an unfamiliar forest behind a hunter who clearly thought less of both of them.
She was thinking about how safe she’d felt standing behind him, even while terrified out of her mind.
And that thought unsettled her far more than the rogue ever had.