Chapter 4: Chapter 4
The silence after Silas left was a physical thing, thick and humming with unspoken words. Eliza busied herself with the teakettle, more for the comfort of routine than any real need. Roman remained standing in the middle of her small kitchen, looking profoundly out of place among the cheery mugs and the pot of thyme on the windowsill.
“You should sit,” she said, not turning around. “You look like a strong breeze would knock you over.”
“I feel like one might,” he admitted, his voice gravelly. He pulled out a chair, the wood scraping softly against the floorboards. The sound was normal, domestic. It clashed with everything they were.
Eliza brought two fresh mugs to the table and sat across from him. “So. Wolfsbane. What does it smell like to you?”
He stared into the steam rising from his tea. “To a human, it’s just a plant. A little bitter, maybe floral. To us…” He trailed off, his eyes losing focus. “It’s like ammonia and rotten honey. It screams in our sinuses. Burns. The bullets were tipped with a concentrated extract. It doesn’t just wound the flesh; it poisons the blood, clouds the mind. It’s what’s keeping my memories locked away.”
“And the scent at the… the scene.” Eliza forced the words out. “You said it was planted.”
“It has to be.” His hands curled around the mug, tight enough she worried the ceramic might crack. “I would never have killed Caleb. He was an idiot, all posturing and no control, but he was a kid. Victoria’s kid. Killing him wouldn’t be murder; it would be suicide for my entire pack. A declaration of war I would never make.” He looked up, and the raw frustration in his gaze was a living thing. “I know that logically. I can feel the truth of it. But the memory… it’s just flashes. The smell of pine and blood. Cold metal. Laughter that wasn’t mine.”
“Whose laughter?”
He shook his head, a sharp, pained motion. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. It’s all sensation, no source.” He pushed the mug away. “Silas is right. We need evidence. But he’s wrong about one thing. I can’t just stay here and heal. The answer isn’t in my head. It’s out there.”
Eliza followed his gaze out the kitchen window, past her overgrown garden to the dark tree line of the woods. The woods where he’d emerged from, bloody and lost. “You want to go back out there. To where it happened.”
“It’s the only way. The body is gone, the scene cleaned by now. But the land remembers. I might remember, if I’m there.” He looked at her, the intensity returning. “But I can’t go alone. The anchor… it’s stabilizing. With you near, the static in my mind clears. The wolf stays quieter. You’re a tether to what’s human in me.”
The idea was insanity. Venturing into the woods with a wounded werewolf being hunted by other werewolves. She opened her mouth to refuse.
“You said you wanted to help,” he said quietly, preempting her. “This is how. Not just by giving me shelter. By being the compass.”
He was manipulating her. She knew it. He probably knew she knew it. But the warmth in her chest gave a slow, agreeing pulse. It wasn’t fear. It was a pull. A dreadful, compelling curiosity.
“It’s the middle of the day,” she said, her practical nature scrambling for purchase. “Won’t that be… safer? Less werewolf-y?”
A faint, grim smile touched his lips. “The wolf isn’t governed solely by the moon. The moon just… turns the volume all the way up. Danger is danger, day or night. But yes, diurnal predators are generally less expectant.”
“I need to change my shoes,” she said, standing up. It was a capitulation, and they both knew it.
Ten minutes later, they stood at the edge of the woods. The sunlight didn’t penetrate far into the canopy; it was a wall of green shadow and cool, damp air. The cheerful birdsong from her garden faded, replaced by the distant knock of a woodpecker and the rustle of unseen things in the leaf litter.
“Stay close,” Roman said. His posture had changed. He moved with a predator’s silent grace, his fatigue seemingly forgotten, his senses cast wide. He was no longer just a man. He was a creature in his element, and it was both terrifying and mesmerizing.
Eliza followed, her hiking boots crunching uncomfortably loud on the twigs. The air grew heavier, smelling of decay and rich, black earth. “Which way?”
He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. His nostrils flared. He wasn’t just smelling; he was sifting, filtering layers of information she couldn’t conceive of. “This way,” he murmured, turning northeast. “The blood scent is gone. But the memory of pain has a… texture.”
They walked in silence for twenty minutes, diving deeper into the heart of the forest. The light became dappled, unreal. Roman would occasionally stop, press a hand against the rough bark of an ancient oak, and stand perfectly still, listening to something she couldn’t hear.
“Here,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble.
They were in a small, uneven clearing where a lightning-struck tree had collapsed, creating a break in the canopy. Sunlight poured in, illuminating a carpet of bright green moss and ferns. It was beautiful. Peaceful.
Roman’s face was anything but peaceful. He walked slowly into the center of the clearing, his body tense. “This is it. They’ve swept it. Scrubbed the earth, removed the… physical evidence.” He knelt, running his fingers through the moss. “But they can’t remove the echo.”
Eliza hung back, watching him. He looked like a man praying at a graveside. “What do you feel?”
“Fear.” The word was ripped from him. “Caleb’s fear. It was sour, metallic. He was terrified before the first cut was made.” Roman’s own breathing grew shallow. “And rage. A hot, righteous rage. It wasn’t mine.” He pressed his palms flat to the ground, his eyes squeezing shut. “The wolfsbane… it was here. A cloud of it. Not from bullets. From the air. Like a spray. It blinded me, choked me.” He coughed, a reflexive gag. “That’s when I was shot. From the trees. Not from the front.”
He rose abruptly, stalking to the eastern edge of the clearing. He examined the ground, then looked up into the branches of a large pine. “The shooter was here. Waiting. They knew I’d come. They used Caleb as bait, doused the area with wolfsbane to disorient me, then fired.” He turned to her, his eyes blazing with the first flicker of true, coherent memory. “It was a trap. A professional, calculated trap.”
“But who—”
A twig snapped in the woods behind them.
Roman was across the clearing in a blur, shoving Eliza behind the massive, rotting trunk of the fallen tree. His body was a solid, radiating wall of heat in front of her. A low, warning growl vibrated in his chest, a sound that belonged to the deep woods, not to a man.
“Show yourself,” Roman called out, his voice cold and commanding.
For a moment, there was only the wind in the leaves. Then, a figure stepped out from behind a thicket of hawthorn. It wasn’t Victoria, or a hulking werewolf enforcer.
It was a young man, perhaps twenty, with shaggy brown hair and wary eyes. He wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt, and he held his hands up, palms out. He smelled of gasoline and wet dog.
“Alpha,” the young man said, his voice trembling. He didn’t look at Eliza. His entire world was Roman.
“Jasper,” Roman said, the name emerging from the fog. A subordinate. A member of his own pack. The tension in his shoulders didn’t ease. “You’re supposed to be with Silas.”
“Detective Blackwood sent a team to sweep the ridge. I was… I was doing a peripheral check. I caught your scent, mixed with the human’s.” Jasper’s eyes finally flicked to Eliza, wide with disbelief. “I had to see. To warn you.”
“Warn me of what?”
Jasper swallowed hard. “The pack… there’s talk, Alpha. Since you disappeared. Victoria’s pack is screaming for blood. Some of our own… they’re starting to wonder. If you did it. If you’re capable of it now. The word ‘rogue’ is being whispered.”
Roman went very still. The word hung in the air, more damaging than any accusation from a rival.
“Silas is holding the line,” Jasper hurried on. “But he can’t hold it forever. You need to come back. Now. To confront the whispers, to lead. If you don’t…” He trailed off, the implication clear. Roman’s authority, already wounded, would dissolve.
“I can’t come back empty-handed,” Roman said, his voice steel. “I need proof. Did the evidence team find anything? Anything at all?”
Jasper shifted his weight, nervous. “They found shell casings. Matched to your registered sidearm.”
Roman’s breath hitched. Of course. It was all too neat.
“But… there was something else,” Jasper whispered, as if afraid the trees themselves were listening. “One of our trackers, old man Grady, he found a scent trail leading away from the secondary site. A different scent. He said it was… clean. Like snow and stone. No animal trace at all. It wasn’t wolf, Alpha. It wasn’t anything he’s ever smelled before.”
A scent that wasn’t wolf. A clean scent amid the brutality.
Roman and Eliza exchanged a glance. The plot, it seemed, was deeper than a simple frame-job between rival packs. Something else had been in these woods. Something other.
“Where did the trail lead?” Roman pressed.
Jasper’s face paled. “It vanished. At the old quarry. Just… gone.” He took a step back, his courage clearly spent. “I have to go before I’m missed. Please, Alpha. Be careful. And… who is she?” He finally nodded toward Eliza.
Roman didn’t hesitate. “She is under my protection. That is all you need to know. Tell Silas what you told me. Tell him to look into the quarry. Now, go.”
Jasper melted back into the forest as silently as he’d arrived.
The clearing felt colder after he left. The sunlight seemed thinner. Roman turned to Eliza, the vulnerability back in his eyes, layered now with a new, more complex dread.
“A clean scent,” Eliza echoed. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Roman said softly, staring at the spot where Jasper had stood, “that whoever is doing this isn’t just trying to start a war between the packs.” He looked at her, his expression grim. “They’re trying to erase us all. And we have no idea what they are.”