Ethereal | Twilight |

012

Paul Lahote pushed Sora past his limits. Through the dead of night, they ran—through tangled underbrush and over uneven terrain—until their legs turned to lead, until their mouths were parched, tongues heavy and dry like sand pressed against roof and teeth. The only thing Sora could smell—piercing, overwhelming—was the sharp, metallic tang of dried blood matted into his fur. It clung to him like a second skin, soaked into every strand, stale and sour and undeniable.

By the time they finally found what they believed to be a way around, a winding detour through unfamiliar woods, they realized they couldn't seem to find a way back. The reservation, once so familiar, now felt a lifetime away—hidden behind an unrelenting blur of trees and distance that refused to make sense.

Sora's stomach groaned, a twisting knot of hunger gnawing at his insides like teeth. Thankfully, the injuries—the bruised ribs, the torn flesh, the bones shattered and halfway splintered—had mended themselves in the way their bodies knew how to do best. What had been fractured was no longer fractured, what had bled had sealed, leaving only phantom aches in their place.

Paul, surprisingly, didn't seem to crave retaliation, even after Sora had bitten him awake—teeth at his shoulder, dragging him back from the edge when he'd found him limp and gray, close to death's doorstep. The memory of it clung to Sora's mind, feral and vivid—the way Paul had looked then, like a ragdoll gutted and abandoned by whatever thing he had fought the night before.

Sora didn't want to call it a vampire. He refused to. Even though the scent it left behind curled in his nostrils with eerie familiarity—faint traces of the Cullen's sweetness layered beneath a deeper, more rancid stench. Not quite human. Not quite vampire. Something else entirely. Something fouler.

Something that didn't belong.

The sun had nearly sunk below the horizon, streaking the sky in amber and dying flame when Paul came to a halt, scanning the woods until he spotted a shallow cave carved into the base of a crooked hill. It wasn't much—barely wide enough to shelter one person—but it was all they had. The cave didn't even lead anywhere, just a dented-out hollow, a dead-end scraped into the rock like nature gave up halfway through.

Paul shifted back first, skin replacing fur in a swift, practiced unraveling. Sora followed, his own change equally painful, equally normal—the kind of ache they'd grown used to over time. As the fur vanished and bare skin met cold air, his legs buckled with exhaustion. He stood naked and scraped up, dirt clinging to every inch of him like a second skin. He could only imagine how foul they both smelled. But after so long immersed in the filth, his senses had dulled to it, his nose desensitized by survival.

He watched Paul drop to the ground, bare skin meeting stone without hesitation. Then Paul looked up, his jaw tilting just enough to catch Sora's gaze.

"Shouldn't we have been able to contact Sam or Jared? While we were shifted?"

Sora lowered himself beside him, settling on the other side.

"I don't know," he said.

Paul sighed, shoulders folding in on themselves as exhaustion took over. He crossed his arms, burying his face between them like a kid hiding from the world—maybe to sleep, maybe just to disappear. Sora couldn't blame him. He wanted to sleep too. The exhaustion pulled at him like warm water, sweet and slow, lulling him toward it with tender hands. It called to him like a siren, soft and merciless.

All he could think about was how the hell they were going to make it back. They couldn't even find the way home, couldn't catch a scent of the Cullen's territory, or their own for that matter. Nothing felt familiar. The woods might as well have swallowed the map whole.