I didn't go back to the medical wing. I didn't go back to the bedroom Skylar had meticulously decorated for me with "historically accurate" tapestries and soft linens. I went to the woods.
The Deville estate sat on the edge of a primal forest, a place where the trees were so old they seemed to hold their breath as I passed. In the past, these woods were a sensory overload—the smell of damp earth, the scurry of squirrels, the distant howl of a pack member. Now, it was a map of power.
I stopped in a clearing where the moonlight hit the frost-covered grass.
"Okay," I whispered, my breath hitching in the cold air. "If I'm not a wolf, and I'm not just a human... what am I?"
*"You are the silence between the heartbeats,"* the voice echoed. *"Try it. Reach for the shadows, little one. Stop looking for the moon; look at the dark it creates."*
