The wind through the high canopy of the Blackpine sounded less like weather and more like a warning.

Freezing mountain sleet slanted down through the hemlocks, snapping brittle twigs and frosting the needles until the entire forest floor was a crust of treacherous, slick slate. It was the kind of night only starving wolves and dead men had any business walking.

Morvayn had been tracking an elk—a massive, scarred bull that had somehow survived two winters on the high ridge. He’d followed its heavy prints for miles, moving with the quiet, effortless stride of a creature who had long forgotten the drag of mortal fatigue. The cold didn't bite him the way it bit the living; it merely settled into his pale flesh like river stone left out beneath the stars. Heavy wolf pelts hung broad across his bare shoulders, the leather harness strapping his chest creaking faintly as he paused beneath an ancient, hollowed spruce.

Then the wind shifted.

Morvayn froze, the tip of his pointed ear twitching beneath raven waves of hair.

It wasn’t the musk of elk or the musk-sour grease of a mountain cat. It was sweet. Hot. Fragile. The distinct, agonizing scent of living mortal blood pumping through veins, accompanied by the ragged, wheezing rhythm of failing lungs.

He exhaled a long breath, a low, gravelly curse slipping past his lips into the freezing mist. "Gods damn it all to the dirt."

He abandoned the hoofprints, moving downwind through the black pines with predatory silence. He slipped over mossy deadfall and melted through the shadows until the timber opened into a shallow, snow-drifted ravine.

There, half-buried in a drift of dead pine needles and fresh frost, was a crumpled silhouette.

Morvayn approached slowly, his heavy boots making zero crunch in the snow. He didn’t draw the long iron hunting knife at his hip; he didn't need to. He towered over the body, head tilting slightly as his glowing amber-gold eyes swept down, taking in the scene with sharp, clinical disgust.

It was pathetic.

This was no seasoned ranger or silver-wielding inquisitor sent to take his head. A real hunter would have been swaddled in boiled leather, heavy wool, grease-treated cloaks, and iron crampons. This person was dressed in thin, fashionable garments that were completely soaked through, a ridiculous city coat, and soft boots that had probably turned their toes to numb, purple ice an hour ago. No bedroll. No kindling kit. Not even a proper hunting knife at the belt—just empty hands, shivering violently in the dirt.

A runaway. Some stubborn, hot-blooded fool who had let their temper outrun their sense, stormed out of a warm village or manor house in a blind fit of juvenile fury, and walked straight into the jaws of the northern wilderness on All Hallows' Eve without the slightest clue how to survive a single night.

The fool was practically blue. The pulse beneath their jaw was a frantic, stuttering flutter, slow and thready. If Morvayn left them here, the frost would claim them in under an hour; if the cold didn't, the timber wolves currently circling three ridges over would happily clean the bones by dawn.

Morvayn dragged a rough, calloused hand over his stubbled jaw, letting out an irritated, exhausted sigh that sounded like stones tumbling down a dry creek bed.

Just walk away, the old cynical beast in his mind muttered. It isn't your stray. You’re an exiled monster, not a wet nurse for suicidal runaways.

His jaw clenched. His retractable fangs ached behind his upper lip, throbbing in protest against the overwhelming, sweet scent of warm marrow and living heartbeats so close to his knees. He was hungry. He’d been feeding on thin deer blood for weeks, and the temptation to just lean down, pierce the frozen skin of their neck, and take what the wilderness had naturally killed was screaming in the back of his skull.

Instead, Morvayn knelt down into the snow.

"Fucking idiot," he grumbled under his breath, his voice raspy and dry from days of total isolation.

He reached out, his massive, scarred hands surprisingly steady and careful despite his irritation. He didn't shake them awake—they were too far gone in hypothermia for conversation anyway. With a smooth, effortless heave, he scooped the limp, freezing body straight up out of the snowbank and tucked them securely against his broad chest, bundling the heavy, thick furs of his mantle around them to cut off the biting wind.

They felt impossibly light, ridiculously fragile, like a half-frozen sparrow scooped up from the dirt. The contrast was startling: Morvayn's bare chest was icy to the touch, but the thick, dense wolf pelts and the shelter of his massive frame instantly blocked the howling sleet.

Turning on his heel, Morvayn started the trek back up the rocky ridge toward the ruined hearth tower, muttering bitter complaints to the empty trees the entire way.

"Rushing off into a mountain blizzard in clothes made of spun ribbons. Brilliant. Your family must be utterly thrilled to have raised such a tactical genius... Well, don't you dare die on my fur before we reach the hearth. I’m not hauling a corpse up this damned hill for free."

The wind shrieked through the rotting canopy of the Blackpine, tearing needles from the boughs and hurling them into your face like handfuls of frozen grit.

Your lungs burned with every ragged, frantic gasp. Your boots—thin, fashionable, utterly useless against the mountain crags—slipped and skidded over black ice, sending you sprawling into the dead leaves and sharp stones before panic dragged you back to your feet.

You had made a mistake. A colossal, fatal mistake. Whatever petty, boiling fury had driven you to storm away from the warmth of the valley, whatever stupid pride had convinced you that the freezing wilderness was better than whatever you had left behind—it had died the moment you heard the first branch snap behind you.

Because something had caught your scent. And it wasn't a wolf.

Crack.

The sound was unnervingly close, echoing off the trunks to your left. Then silence. An absolute, suffocating dead zone where even the howling wind seemed to hold its breath.

Then came the sound: a low, shuddering inhalation that rattled like dry bones.

Morvayn was starving.

It had been weeks. The game on the high ridge had migrated south ahead of the early blizzards, leaving the mountain passes barren. For near a month, his diet had consisted of nothing but thin, sour mountain hares and frozen carrion—barely enough to keep his cursed pulse crawling, let alone maintain the iron-clad restraint he had spent centuries forging. The starvation hadn't just weakened him; it had hollowed him out, stripping away the exiled knight, the dry wit, the cynical nobleman, until all that remained was a starving, rabid apex predator.

And then the wind had brought him you.

Living, rushing, thumping mortal blood. The intoxicating, sweet heat of adrenaline-spiked marrow flooding the icy air. It hit his starving senses like a torch dropped in dry straw. His mind snapped. The feral beast seized the reins, blacking out reason, duty, and mercy in a red, screaming tide of pure biological need.

A blur of dark fur and bare, corded muscle tore through the lower branches twenty paces ahead of you, cutting off your path.

You choked on a scream, throwing yourself backward against the trunk of a massive, ancient hemlock.

Through the drifting sleet and shadows, Morvayn stalked toward you, moving with a horrific, jerky fluidity. He didn't look like a man anymore. He was crouched low on the balls of his boots, his massive, broad-shouldered frame coiled like a spring, dark furs bristling around his neck like the mane of a ravenous beast. The heavy leather straps across his bare, pale chest heaved violently with ragged, desperate panting.

His face was a mask of nightmare.

His dark hair whipped across his features in tangled, wild waves, his pointed ears pinned back flat against his skull. But it was his eyes that froze the scream in your throat: his irises were burning, incandescent amber-gold, the pupils dilated into razor-thin vertical slits that fixed onto your throat with sickening, unblinking fixation.

His upper lip was pulled back in an animalistic snarl, revealing long, curved, glistening canine fangs dripping with thick saliva. The veins along his neck and jaw pulsed black and swollen, thrumming under the skin as the scent of your terror drove his starved body into absolute delirium.

He took a slow, heavy step forward. The pine needles crunched under his boots.

"Blood..." The sound ripped out of his throat, barely human—a cracked, guttural wheeze that sounded as if his vocal cords were being scraped with broken glass.

His hand, tipped with sharp, blackened nails, twitched at his side, trembling with the violent strain of a dying mind wrestling for a shred of control. For a half-second, his jaw clicked shut, his eyes flickering with a horrifying flash of agony, of awareness—a brief, agonizing war between the knight dying inside him and the beast driving his body.

"Run..." he grated out, a low, wet growl tearing from his chest as his claws dug into his own thigh, drawing dark, sluggish blood through the leather in a desperate bid to shock himself back to reality. "Run, you damn fool... run!"

The restraint shattered in the very next breath.

With a deafening, inhuman roar that shook the frost from the branches, Morvayn lunged forward, closing the distance in a heartbeat, his claws reaching out to drag you down into the bloody snow.