The air before dawn had the taste of rain that had not yet arrived — wet stone, moss rubbed between the fingers, a faint metallic curl in the throat. The boy woke into it without the help of dreams. His body was already listening.
The world outside his shelter wasn't empty. It had weight.
He eased out from under the root-tangle roof, wearing the heavy furs he'd taken from kills in past weeks. Rabbit pelts sewn into a rough mantle, their gray-brown blending into cedar bark; a strip of serow hide draped over his shoulders, still carrying a faint musk, damp from yesterday's rain. The scent and texture softened the edges of his shape — less boy, more part of the treeline.
The sword rode high on his back, leather wrap dark from oil and weather, the hilt within easy reach over his right shoulder. In his hand he carried the spear — shaft worn smooth where his grip fell, head bound tight with sinew that had dried as hard as horn. It felt like the right shape for the morning.
A soft crack of frost gave him his first direction.
The brush at the far edge of the basin quivered. A pale flank slid between cedar shadows, then stilled. The wolf's narrow face emerged — mottled gray, with the kind of eyes that measure without promising. It did not look at him the way prey does. It looked as though it had already decided something.
He kept his chin slightly lowered, eyes meeting only for a moment. A wolf's greeting was not in words or sound, but in how much space you offered without stepping away.
The wolf's ears shifted — not quite forward, not quite back. It took two steps sideways into open view. Another shape moved in behind it, darker and heavier across the shoulders, holding still long enough for him to see the breath roll from its muzzle.
He adjusted his stance in reply: weight on the balls of his feet, spear kept low and parallel to his thigh, body turned just enough to let them see his profile. Not a threat. Not a retreat.
The mottled wolf's head lifted, nose tasting the wind that flowed between them. It held that posture until the darker one gave a short, low chuff — not hostile, but not idle either. The sound was the same a hunter makes when the path is set.
The mottled wolf turned and slipped back into the trees. The darker followed. Neither hurried. Neither looked back.
He understood it for what it was — not an order, not quite an invitation, but a measure: If you are coming, come now.
They made no effort to hide their passing. Prints pressed into soft soil where the slope kept the night's water close; a scuff on bark from a careless flank; the drift of scent too fresh to have cooled. He followed at the pace of a hunter who is not yet part of the hunt — ears forward, weight ready to leave the trail entirely if the wind turned wrong.
The wolves stayed ahead, never close enough to touch, but close enough to see them vanish and appear again, always forward. It was not mercy. It was a measure.
He moved light, remembering to keep his shoulders loose and his steps angled with the slope. When the ground gave him a clean stretch, he tested the three-step burst. Lightning in the calves. The clean click of joint over joint, weight spilling forward. It bought him a breath of closeness, but the cost was sharp — breath faster than it should be. He let the hill's own slope repay some of what he had spent and slowed until the burn in his thighs faded.
The burst was a tool, not a gift. Use it like fire: for need, not vanity.
The ridge bent into a strip of bare stone, silver with frost at the edges, pines gripping its sides like hands on a blade. The wolves moved across it in a low, easy lope — claws clicking once or twice, then gone.
He matched their pace with short bursts, each one timed to land in a quiet pocket of stone. The first two left his breath ragged; the third felt smoother, his weight settling without the scramble at the end.
It was good practice — and there was no better teacher than ground that punished mistakes.
The air began to change — threads of musk woven into the cold, edged with the faint tang of fur kept clean by licking. Goat, maybe. Mountain kind, the sort that trusts its hooves more than its eyes.
The wolves began to spread. Two ghosted to the right, vanishing into cedar shade. One drifted left along a low ledge. The rest kept the middle ground but slowed until their paws set down with the patience of rain starting.
He angled upslope, letting his nose stay in the stream of their path while his boots found quieter ground. His father's voice came unbidden: If you can't be faster, be where they aren't looking. Earth Elementum agreed — the ground seemed to steady for him, his landings settling without the small betrayals of loose stones.
He saw it when they did — a young goat, narrow-horned, picking at shoots in a gap between stones. It moved in the awkward balance of knowing there are predators in the world but not yet having learned their shapes.
The wolves began their funnel. The left-ledge hunter eased forward until the goat's path back to the ridge was cut. The two on the right sank lower, bodies folding into the brush.
The boy mirrored the arc — not running straight, but angling his approach to keep the wind slicing past his cheek instead of his neck. Each time the ground rose beneath him, he spent a half-burst, enough to land in silence and shorten the next angle.
By now the technique was coming easier. His landings no longer jolted the breath from him, and the gap to the rearmost wolf had not grown for more than a dozen breaths.
It began with a sound like stone cracking — a misstep from the goat as it bolted uphill. The wolves on the right surged, not to catch, but to steer. The goat turned into the space they had left for it, straight toward the gully mouth.
He kept the high line, where the ground's folds let him see the pattern without standing in it. Bursts came when the slope gave him a gift — a clean run between roots, a rise that could throw him forward if he let it. His legs began to understand the spacing without asking his mind first.
He saw Fenrir then, not from behind but ahead — waiting at the gully's narrowest point, a stillness carved out of the gray. The goat never even tried to stop. One heartbeat it was running; the next, Fenrir's jaws were around its throat, another wolf slamming in from behind to drop the weight forward.
It was over before his last breath of the chase was gone.
The pack fell on the kill with the controlled frenzy of those who know their order. No snapping at each other. No waste of motion. Each wolf took the place it was owed.
He stood a little ways off, chest still rising fast. The blood smell was sharp enough to make his teeth feel tight. He did not move closer. This was not his circle to step into.
When the meat had begun to vanish from the ribs, one of the younger wolves — pale-legged, with a dark stripe down its muzzle — pulled free a strip and carried it a few paces toward him. It dropped the meat on the ground, closer than it needed to, and stepped back without breaking eye contact.
He didn't take it immediately. He let the air between them hold for a breath, then knelt, lifted the strip, and nodded once. No smile. No words. The wolf's tail flicked once before it turned back to the kill.
They did not disappear from him as quickly on the way home. Twice, he found himself holding the same stride as the trailing wolf for more than a few steps. Once, the ground offered him a short downhill, and he matched pace long enough to see the way the wolf's shoulders rolled, muscles working in pairs like gears.
By the time the basin's rim came into view, his legs were heavy but not burning. The bursts had come when they were meant to, and for the first time, he felt he had run with something instead of chasing it.
Back in his shelter's shadow, he cleaned the strip of meat on a flat stone and roasted it small over a fire no larger than his cupped hands. He ate slowly, letting the warmth sink into his arms and chest.
Outside, the rain finally arrived, pattering on cedar needles, carrying away the goat's blood scent. Somewhere beyond the trees, the wolves were lying with full bellies. He wondered if any of them were listening to the rain the same way he was.
When the fire died to embers, he lay back, and the rhythm of the run replayed in him — burst, glide, land, breathe. A shape worth keeping.
Tomorrow, he thought, he could hold it longer.