In wolf form, the world was bigger and sharper. Sound carried far. Scents braided into clear lines. They were larger than wild wolves, furred and strong, but their limbs kept a human logic; they did not have to drop to all fours unless they chose.
A hind had crossed the lower trail and turned toward the birches. Dante lifted his face, assessing the air, and loped ahead along the ridge to cut a wide arc. His dark shape slid over a rise and was gone. Daniel drifted left to shadow the scent. Silas held the flank a length behind him.
Silas slowed when Dante was far enough. He read Daniel’s back, measured the space, and moved.
He came in from the scrub without a sound, a gray blur with teeth bared for the throat. Daniel turned at the rush in the air and met him hard—forearm up, claws raking to knock Silas’s muzzle wide. Silas’s bite took flesh from the bicep, not the artery. Daniel drove a shoulder through Silas’s chest and threw him into a fern.
Silas rolled, low and fast, and slashed for the hamstring. Daniel shifted his weight cleanly and hooked Silas’s foreleg with both hands, twisting until the joint popped. Silas tore free, snapped for Daniel’s face; Daniel’s elbow cracked across Silas’s jaw and split the skin along his cheek. Blood warmed Silas’s fur. They broke apart, breath smoking.
Silas came again, aiming to finish—throat, belly, anything that ended movement. Daniel did not back up. He stepped inside the arc, planted, and slammed Silas to the ground with a wrestler’s throw. The earth jumped. Silas’s breath left him. Daniel’s knee pinned his ribs; a forearm braced his neck just enough to promise the end if he chose it.
“Why?” Daniel growled, voice low and clear.
Silas felt the edge slide away from him. He had counted on one clean kill before Daniel could turn. He couldn't do it. He would not win fast. Dante would feel the change in the air and come. Witnesses would ruin the work.
He changed the plan.
Silas went still for a beat, then bared his teeth in something close to a smile. “Fine,” he rasped. “You may be stronger, but I'm faster. I’ll take her throat while your Alpha chases deer.”
Daniel’s weight shifted without thought, rage blanching restraint. Silas used the sliver of slack, twisted free, and sprang into the alder. He ran crooked through the thorn to break scent, splashed the creek to wash it, then climbed the far bank in three long bounds.
Daniel did not think. He launched after him, hot and fast, heart punching at the ribs. Every step said: Cordelia. He would reach the house first, he told himself; he would hold the door, he would put his body where any blade would need to go.
Silas kept enough sound ahead to pull Daniel farther from the ridge, a flash of gray, then leaves. When he felt the distance was safe, he cut uphill, found shelter behind a birch, and returned to skin. He pressed two fingers to his cheek to cut and bleed clean, and tore his sleeve to show a fight. He set his face to a worried friend and stepped onto the main trail.
Dante came off the arc moments later, still in wolf shape, then slipped behind another birch and returned to himself. He took in blood, torn cloth, and the shallow slash on Silas’s forearm.
“What happened?” Dante asked.
“We split at the alder. I heard movement upslope—thought the hind broke. Daniel cut across." Silas said, as if he were putting pieces together. "By the time I reached him, he was turning back downhill. I tried to stop him; he hit me and ran. It looked like he meant for the house.”
“Without a call?” Dante kept his voice even.
Silas lowered his tone. “Leah went to the market,” he said. “Cordelia’s alone. Perhaps he wanted to be sure she wasn’t left long.”
Dante’s face did not change. The words moved anyway. Leah at the market. Cordelia alone. Daniel fills gaps. Old talk from the hall, a wrong hour at a door—the seed he had sworn not to water—itched like a splinter under skin.
“Why attack you then?” Dante said.
“I don`t know.” Silas let the quiet do part of the work.
Wind combed the birches. The creek made a small, steady sound below. The hunt waited and did not matter anymore.
“We go back,” Dante said. “If he ran back, I want to know why.”
“I’ll take the upper path,” Silas answered at once. He lifted his bleeding arm as if it slowed him. “I’ll reach the gate, let you know if anything’s wrong.”
“Go,” Dante said.
Silas ran. Once the trees hid him, he dropped the “upper path” and cut the straightest line, sliding off a rock step to open his cheek wound wider and dragging a snapped twig across his forearm to stripe it. He smeared dirt into the blood at his collar to make the mess look worse. He wanted red when he hit the yard and speed that looked like fear.
Behind him followed Dante. He returned to fur—longer lungs, quicker feet—and loped for the estate at a controlled pace that saved strength for whatever waited.
Daniel, meanwhile, had followed Silas’s noise until it thinned. He stopped knee-deep in the creek, let the cold bite his legs, and listened. No true chase ahead. Only trick. He cursed himself for heat and turned for the house by the fastest cut he knew, still in wolf form, still thinking only about Luna's safety.
Silas reached the house first, as planned. He returned to skin on the run, shouldered past a stable boy, and crossed the yard at a stagger that wasted nothing. Blood was bright on cheek and sleeve. Breath was loud enough to carry.
He hit the south door already calling the eyes that would soon look at him.
“Inside!” he shouted.
For now, the point was to seize the center of the tale before another voice could lay a claim on it.
Out on the trail, Dante ran the landmarks he knew by heart: the split rock, the old stump, the turn where the wall first showed through trees. Anxiety pressed. Shadows moved at the edge of sight that had nothing to do with forest and everything to do with a servant’s rumor and a friend’s careful tone. He hated that. He ran anyway.
Daniel broke from the birches onto the main track, eyes sharp. He ran harder, every stride a vow.
The morning had started as a hunt. It had become a test—one man bleeding and ahead with a story, one man bears the sign of truth, but they will not hear it, one man angry and too late to catch the lie before it reaches the door.