Meg's POV
Time doesn't heal.
It only teaches you where not to press too hard.
Six years pass like water cutting rock—slow and steady until the shape of your life no longer matches what it used to be. I stop counting birthdays. I start counting exits. New names. New addresses. Each one a short chapter we never finish.
Henry grows anyway.
That's the part no one tells you. Children grow even when the world asks them not to.
The mountain house holds us for two quiet years before the silence begins to feel too clean, too curated. The birds vanish first. Then the deer.
The woods start watching instead of breathing. Sometimes I wake with the taste of static in my mouth. That's how I know we've stayed too long. Places remember power even when you bury it deep.
We leave before dawn, headlights off until the road bends downhill. Henry doesn't cry. He never does when we move. He just watches the trees slip away, his hand pressed against the glass like he's memorizing the color of goodbye.
Cities work better. Cities smell like iron and exhaust instead of blood. People don't look too long. Wolves avoid crowds—they can't stretch instinct there.
I learn to shrink into routine: head lowered, voice careful, movements forgettable. I learn what to say when someone asks where his father is. I learn not to flinch at every shadow.
I stop waiting for rescue.
Henry turns six the week I realize he's learned to hide too.
Not like a child playing. Not under blankets or behind furniture. He hides his reactions. He watches people before speaking. He listens to tone, not words. That's how I know he's reading the world the way I used to read danger.
One evening I find him on the living room rug. He's arranging toy soldiers in two perfect lines—no chaos, no attack, just symmetry.
"Why like that?" I ask.
"So no one gets surprised," he says.
"Surprised by what?"
"By losing."
The answer lands heavier than it should.
"Henry, you don't have to think about winning all the time."
He lifts his head and studies me with a kind of patience that doesn't belong to children. "If I don't think," he says, "things go wrong."
There's no fear in his voice. Only duty.
That night, I can't sleep. I sit at the kitchen table while the rain works its small percussion on the window. My reflection looks harder now—hair cropped short, shoulders tight from always bracing. I remind myself this was the only way. He's alive. He's free. That's the success story, isn't it?
But the bond in my chest disagrees.
It's quiet most nights, a scar under skin. Tonight it stirs like something remembering its name.
Not pain. Not warning.
Recognition.
Martins.
I don't say it aloud. Saying it would give it shape. Bonds fade when ignored—that's what I told myself. That's what the scrolls promised.
The pulse comes again, warmer, close enough that my skin tingles. I stand, move down the hall, check on Henry. He's sprawled across the bed, limbs flung out, his small chest rising and falling like he's anchoring the whole room. Even asleep, he centers everything around him.
"You're safe," I whisper. My voice catches on the lie.
My phone buzzes from the nightstand. Unknown number. The message is five words long:
I dreamed of silver eyes.
The room tilts for a second. I grip the doorframe until my breathing steadies. I don't answer. I delete it, but my fingers shake long after.
The messages keep coming—each one calm, almost reverent.
The elders are restless.
The borders are thinning.
There's silence in the bond where a child should be.
That last one cuts through everything.
Henry starts talking about his dreams around the same time. He calls them "walks."
"There's a forest," he tells me one morning, spoon suspended over his cereal. "It's quiet, but it's not here. Someone waits at the edge."
"Someone scary?" I ask, keeping my tone light.
He shakes his head. "No. He's careful."
Careful. The word chills me more than fear would.
At the market later that week, a woman drops her basket when Henry laughs. A stray dog backs away, tail tucked, whining low. It's small, but small things have always been the beginning of storms.
And then—outside his school—a man brushes past me. Too close. Too deliberate. His voice barely above a whisper.
"Rare blood doesn't disappear," he says. "It echoes."
By the time I turn, he's gone.
That night, the bond detonates open.
It's not gradual; it's a tidal wave. Martins' energy floods in—heat, command, the raw gravity of recognition. My heart slams. Henry jerks awake, clutching his chest, eyes glowing faintly. Power rolls off him before he can stop it. The windows shake. The lights flicker.
I pull him into my arms. "Breathe, baby, breathe. It's okay."
"It's not," he says against my shoulder, his voice small but certain. "He's coming."
Outside, thunder answers though the sky is clear. The air tastes of metal, of lightning waiting for a reason. The bond tightens again, no longer faint, no longer ignorable. Martins is no longer a memory or a name hidden in a phone. He's real and close enough that I can feel the space between his breaths.
I can also feel the others behind him.
Hunters.
Trackers.
People who've spent six years studying where we run.
Henry looks up at me, eyes shining pale gold now, not silver. "Mama," he whispers, "he's not going to stop."
His words aren't prophecy. They're fact.
I press my forehead to his. My pulse races, wild and uneven. The room smells of ozone and fear and something deeper—resignation. "Then we don't hide," I tell him softly. "Not anymore."
He blinks at me, uncertain. "Are we going to fight?"
"Maybe," I say. "Or maybe we run somewhere they don't expect."
"Where's that?"
"Where wolves forget to look."
Outside, the thunder rolls again, closer now, footsteps forming inside the sound. The bond vibrates like wire pulled too tight. Martins doesn't speak through it, but I feel what he's saying.
I found you.
My throat closes. I want to hate him. I want to forgive him. I can't decide fast enough. All I know is that six years of hiding were never really silence—they were the inhale before the storm.
Henry presses his small hand over my heart. His touch steadies me. The glow beneath his skin flares once, like moonlight caught under glass.
The world holds its breath.
Then the first howl rises—distant, deliberate, answered by another closer to the city line.
The sound threads through every wall and bone until even the glass hums with it.
I gather our bag, grab the old pendant from the drawer. "Shoes, Henry," I whisper. My voice trembles but doesn't break. "It's time to move."
He doesn't argue. He never does.
As I open the door, the air outside shivers with tension. Wind pushes against me as though the night itself is warning me to turn back.
Too late.
Six years of shadows were never escape. They were a map. And now the hunters know every corner of it.
I take Henry's hand. The bond burns bright enough to hurt. Martins is out there, coming closer with every heartbeat.
And for the first time, I don't know if his arrival means salvation—or the start of a war neither of us can walk away from.