The snow still clung to the trees when Mia and Ronan stepped outside for their morning walk. The air was crisp, sharp against her lungs, and the world felt hushed under the thick blanket of white. Mia pulled her coat tighter around her, watching her breath curl in the air as she trudged beside Ronan.


    They walked in silence for a while, the only sound the crunch of their boots against the snow. It was familiar now, this routine. She had grown used to his steady presence, the way he always stayed just half a step ahead, his sharp eyes scanning the tree line, his senses always attuned to something she couldn’t quite grasp.


    But today, something felt different. She was so, so tired from staying up so late, but the desperate need to stay by Ronan’s side prompted her out the door, unwilling to be alone even for a moment after the nightmares. She’d gone years without them and now, after a week of howls in the night, her mother’s murder was the star of her nightly dreams.


    Her gaze flickered downward, and she stopped in her tracks. There, pressed deep into the snow just a few feet from the cabin’s back door, were tracks. Large. Too large to be any normal wolf.


    Her stomach twisted. She had seen prints like these before. It was her nightmares come to life.


    Ronan stopped when he realized she wasn’t following. His gaze tracked to where hers was fixed, and for the briefest moment, something unreadable flickered across his face.


    “Mia?”


    She exhaled shakily. “They’re too close.”


    He was quiet for a moment. “Snow drifts make them look bigger,” he said carefully. “Could be a lone wolf passing through.”


    Mia shook her head. “No. I know what I’m looking at.”


    A familiar unease crawled over her skin, wrapping tight around her ribs. It pulled her back, back to another winter, another night when she had found tracks just like these leading toward her childhood home.


    “My mom used to tell me stories about shifters,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Not monsters. Heroes. Protectors. She said they lived among us, hidden, waiting for the right time to reveal themselves.”


    She let out a hollow laugh. “I used to pretend I was one of them.”


    Ronan didn’t speak. He was listening. Really listening.


    Mia swallowed hard and forced herself to go on. “That night... I was outside. I used to sneak out all the time to pretend I was running with them. I’d get as far as the tree line, then come back before my mom noticed.”


    Her fingers clenched around the edges of her coat. “But that night, I heard them. The howls. They sounded so close, and they weren’t like the ones I was used to. These were wrong. Aggressive. It scared me so bad I ran straight home.” She hesitated, her throat tightening. “That’s when I found her.”


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Ronan’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t interrupt.


    “She was already gone.” Mia’s voice trembled. “I told myself it was a burglary gone wrong. That it had to be. The police said the same thing. But now…” Her breath hitched as she gestured toward the tracks. “Now I’m not so sure.”


    Ronan exhaled through his nose, his expression unreadable. “Mia, you were a kid. You went through something horrific. Your mind—”


    “I know what I heard,” she snapped, cutting him off. “And now, after all these years, I’m hearing them again, when something is supposedly after me.”


    Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. The wind rustled the branches overhead, sending a flurry of snow down around them.


    Mia studied Ronan’s face, searching for something—anything—that would tell her what he was thinking. But he only nodded, his expression carefully neutral.


    “You’re safe here,” he said at last. “I promise.”


    She wanted to believe him. But the wolf prints in the snow told a different story.


    Mia’s fingers curled into fists inside her coat pockets, a war waging inside her between fear and frustration. “I don’t get it,” she admitted. “If it wasn’t some random burglary… if those howls meant something, then why? Why my mom? Why was she being hunted?”


    Ronan’s gaze was distant, unreadable. “I don’t know.”


    She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “You don’t believe me.”


    “I believe you heard something,” he said carefully. “I believe you’re scared. But I also know fear has a way of twisting memories.”


    Mia frowned, looking back at the tracks. “You always seem to have an answer for everything, don’t you?”


    His lips pressed into a thin line, and for a moment, she thought he wouldn’t respond. But then he sighed. “I just want you to focus on what’s in front of you. Not ghosts from the past.”


    She scoffed. “Ghosts?”


    “That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly, his jaw clenching. “I just don’t want you to scare yourself into seeing things that might not be there.”


    Mia took a step back, eyeing him warily. “You don’t think it’s a coincidence, do you?”


    Ronan hesitated. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”


    Her heart thumped painfully against her ribs. “Then what do you believe?”


    He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he turned his gaze to the forest, watching the way the wind stirred the heavy-laden branches. “That you need to be careful.”


    A chill that had nothing to do with the cold ran down Mia’s spine. She had been so sure that coming here, escaping to this cabin, would give her the space to finally breathe. But now? Now she wasn’t sure if she was running from something or straight into it.


    They stood there in the snow for a long moment, the silence between them stretching, shifting. Then, finally, Ronan exhaled and turned back toward the cabin. “Come on,” he said, voice softer now. “Let’s get inside.”


    Mia hesitated but eventually followed, glancing over her shoulder one last time at the tracks disappearing into the trees. Whatever Ronan believed, she knew one thing for certain. The past wasn’t done with her yet.


    She let Ronan guide her back inside, his hand on her lower back. He sat her by the fire like routine and draped a blanket over her lap. Then he pulled off her boots, her beanie, her scarf. She watched as he sat each in their place by the back door. It was nice, comforting, to have him take care of her like this, especially when she felt so close to breaking from fear and confusion.


    Ronan handed her a mug of tea a few minutes later, set the book she’d been working through on the table beside her and then murmured an excuse before slipping out to the front porch where he paced for several long minutes before settling into near perfect stillness looking out into the trees.