The auditorium lights of the international obstetrics congress still clung to Elena's eyelids like afterimages. Eight hours of lectures, a panel on fetal hemodynamics, two formal dinners with strangers she pretended to know—she should have been exhausted.
Instead, something restless pulsed under her skin, a taut shimmer of unease she couldn't name.
Maybe it was the jet lag.
Maybe it was Beijing's night air, too bright, too sharp.
Maybe it was the instinct she trusted more than anything—quiet, clinical, honed from years in delivery rooms—warning her that something was about to rupture.
She stepped out of the hotel, drawing her jacket close.
The street was unusually still, a rare pocket of silence in the city.
A thin mist rolled over the pavement, and for reasons she couldn't articulate, she stopped walking.
The mist thickened. The ground quivered.
And the world folded inward.
No light. No sound. Just a brutal tug behind her ribs, as if invisible hands had hooked into her sternum and pulled.
Then—impact.
Cold stone. The smell of pine resin.A sky carved by two moons.
Elena pushed herself upright, adrenaline scraping her throat raw. Her medical mind scrambled for rationality:
Hypoxia?Neurological event?Hallucination?
But everything was too vivid—the bite of the air, the roughness of the ground, the metallic taste of fear, the echo of distant shouting.
Shouting that was getting closer.
She staggered to her feet, instinct beating out analysis.
Figures burst through the trees—armored, fast, blades drawn. Their eyes widened at the sight of her: a woman in a blouse and conference badge, alone in a forest at night.
Oh, fantastic, Elena thought. Teleported to Narnia and already underdressed for the occasion.
One barked an order in a language she didn't recognize, sharp and grating like metal on stone.
Three of them started toward her.
Elena did the only reasonable thing left.
She ran.
Branches whipped at her arms as she pushed through the undergrowth, heels slipping on damp soil. Her conference tote bag thumped against her hip with every step, the contents rattling in panicked rhythm.
"This," she gasped, "is not… what… continuing education… was supposed to look like."
Shouts rang out behind her.
Boots pounded after her, getting closer.
She dodged left, then right, having absolutely no idea where she was going—just away. Away from steel and shouting and a reality that had stopped making sense.
The trees thinned just enough to show her the problem.
A slope. A steep one. Rocks and darkness below.
She skidded to a stop.
Behind her: armored men with swords.
In front of her: gravity.
"Great," she muttered. "Death by falling or death by stabbing. Really branching out, Elena."
The first soldier reached her and lunged.
She swung the tote bag.
Hard.
The heavy canvas slammed into his chest with a surprising thud. He stumbled back with a grunt, clearly not expecting to be assaulted by continuing medical education materials.
For one shining second, Elena felt violently competent.
Then the tote gave up.
The seam ripped.
The bag split open, spewing pens, folded programs, a crumpled granola bar, a pack of sticky notes, and a tampon across the forest floor like baffling offerings to some very confused woodland god.
The soldier stared.
Elena stared.
Well. That was symbolic.
Another soldier lunged, grabbing for her arm. She twisted, yanking free, heart racing so hard it hurt.
A third drew his sword.
Then the air cracked.
A dark shape dropped from above, landing between her and the soldiers with a solid, final sound.
The man rose from his crouch in one unhurried motion, cloak settling around him like poured ink. Broad shoulders. Long, dark hair unbound and stirred by the wind. A presence that made the forest itself seem to hold its breath.
He didn't look at her. He didn't need to.
Every soldier stopped.
He spoke—a single word, low and sharp.
The men flinched.
Not confusion. Recognition. And underneath it, something very close to fear.
One of them spat out a reply and charged.
The stranger moved. Not like a fighter. Like a force.
He sidestepped, caught the attacker's wrist, twisted, and drove an elbow into the man's throat in one fluid motion. The sword fell. The soldier dropped to his knees, gagging.
Another swung from behind.
Without even turning fully, the stranger pivoted, cloak flaring. Steel flashed—too fast for Elena to follow—and the second soldier staggered back, blood blooming along his arm.
A third tried to take advantage, rushing in low, blade aimed at the stranger's ribs.
He simply wasn't there anymore.
One heartbeat he stood in front of Elena; the next, he had slipped aside, grabbed the man's collar, and slammed him into a tree so hard bark cracked.
Elena pressed herself against another trunk, lungs burning, mind trying to catalog: stance, center of gravity, angle of impact. He fought the way some surgeons worked—precise, economical, every movement purposeful.
Two more soldiers hesitated, then rushed him together.
He met them head-on.
A step. A twist. A boot hooking behind a knee. One went down, breath knocked from him.
The other swung high. The stranger ducked, drove his shoulder into the man's abdomen, then shoved him back with such force he tumbled over the slope's edge, crashing down through brush and rock.
The remaining men broke.
They fled into the dark, crashing through the undergrowth, leaving only groans and the dead behind.
Silence fell over the trees.
The man turned.
Up close, he was worse. Or better. Depends on the metric.
Severe jawline. A faint scar along his cheekbone. Eyes so dark they seemed to hoard starlight instead of reflecting it. He studied her clothes, her badge, her wild breathing with a level, clinical focus that felt too familiar.
Predator, her instincts whispered.Trauma team leader, her brain argued weakly.Something in between, the rest of her decided.
"Qǐng gōng nǚ," he murmured, stepping closer. His voice was low, almost dangerous. "You shouldn't be here."
Elena swallowed. "I don't know where here is."
His gaze drifted down to the badge clipped to her blouse:
Dr. Elena Moreau — Obstetrics & Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Something flickered in his expression.
Interest. Suspicion. Calculation.
He reached for her wrist to see it more clearly.
His fingers closed around her skin—warm. Too warm for the cold night. Grounding and unsettling at the same time.
She jerked back on instinct.
His eyes narrowed—not in anger, but in something darker. Intrigued. Assessing. Possessive in a way that made heat crawl under her skin.
He glanced down.
At the ground.
At the crime scene that had once been her tote bag.
Pens scattered. Programs half-crumpled. The granola bar, heroically intact. And the tampon, lying in the dirt like the world's least threatening relic.
He bent, picked up one of the pens, turning it between his fingers as if weighing it.
Then, to her horror, he lifted the tampon delicately by the string.
"Is this," he asked, voice toneless, "a weapon where you come from?"
Elena choked. "No! It's—it's medical. Personal. Very personal. Please just… put it down."
He set it back on the ground with the careful gravity of someone returning a holy object to an altar.
His gaze returned to her.
"You attacked armed soldiers," he said slowly, "with a cloth sack and… these things."
"It was that or my shoe," she snapped, adrenaline still spiking. "And I like my shoes."
A long pause.
"You startled them," he said.
"It bought me ten seconds," she shot back. "I'll take it."
For the first time, something almost like amusement ghosted over his face. The barest curve at the corner of his mouth. Gone in an instant, but undeniable.
"You are not what I expected," he murmured.
"You are exactly what I expected," she muttered. "Mysterious forest warlord with anger issues."
His head tilted slightly. "What did you call me?"
"Nothing," she said quickly. "Stress. Oxygen deprivation. Ignore me."
He straightened fully, eyes darkening, and when he spoke again his voice carried a cool, absolute authority.
"You stand in the territory of Prince Soren," he said, almost lazily. "You appear out of nothing. That makes you… complicated."
She steadied her breathing. "And who are you?"
His smirk returned—sharp, dangerous, entirely undeserved.
"I," he said, stepping close enough for her to smell pine and steel and something unmistakably male, "am Soren."
Of course he is, she thought. Not a hallucination. Not a random local. An emotionally repressed forest prince with homicidal grace. Perfect.
His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist—deliberate, testing. Heat shot up her arm; she hated how quickly her body reported in.
"And until I understand what you are," he murmured, voice dipping lower, "you will remain under my protection."
Protection.
The word curled around her like a collar.
Elena lifted her chin. "I don't belong to you."
His eyes darkened, slow and inexorable.
"No," he said. "But you will stay close. For your safety."
A pause. A breath.
The night felt suddenly too small.