POV: APHRODITE
The wrongness starts the moment we wake on our first full day in unclaimed territory.
I can't pinpoint what exactly feels off at first. The forest looks the same. Trees still grow thick around our camp, their bark rough and dark with morning dew. Birds still sing in the canopy, their calls echoing through pine-scented air. The sun still rises and paints everything gold, touching the moss-covered stones scattered throughout the clearing with warm light.
But something is missing.
I'm packing my bedroll when it finally clicks. No pack scent. Anywhere.
In pack lands, even the buffer zones between territories, there's always the faint underlying musk of wolves. Scent markers on trees. Territorial claims left in strategic locations. The invisible map that tells you whose land you're standing on and where the boundaries lie.
Here, there's nothing. Just earth and forest and the natural smell of wild things that don't answer to the Moon or pack law.
