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Scowling, Sascha says, “I’m not sure what else we can do. This island is so fucking tiny it’ll only take an hour to cross. Where the hell are we gonna hide otherwise? We can’t just walk in circles around the shoreline hoping no one heads us off.”

“That’d be funny. Like that scene in The Emperor’s New Groove,” Avery says, throwing him a smile that’s easier than it should be. “Hey, Sascha.” Avery tugs Sascha to a stop, then gently pries the map out of his trembling hands.

“I can’t handle a speech right now, babe,” Sascha says, exhaustion clear in the lines of his face.

“That’s fine,” murmurs Avery, stroking his cheeks like he could erase every mark left by anything other than a smile. “I don’t have enough words for a speech, anyway. I just want you to know?—”

A howl pierces the air, sending birds fluttering from the surrounding trees into the painfully blue sky. It feels wrong to hear such a sound in the middle of the morning rather than while lost in the dark woods at night. Something about the mournful wail feels so at odds with the sunlight, Avery almost pities the wolf.

Then Sascha seizes his hand, and they break into a run.

Avery doesn’t know where they’re running, and he doesn’t think Sascha knows either. He’s dragging them away from the source of the howling, but then there’s another, and another, and another, until the woods around them convulse with the discordance of abused piano keys. Ahead, to the right, Avery sees the stone walls and iron bars making up St. Ann’s Cemetery, and Sascha yanks him to a stop.

“No,” Sascha says. “Not a fucking cemetery. Not today, goddamnit.”

“What’re you afraid of, zombies?”

Borderline hysterical, Avery finds the retort hilarious, but Sascha only hauls right to avoid the rows and rows of gravestones ahead. They run so hard their hands unlink, backpacks slamming into their spines with every stride. It’s not comfortable for Avery, but after what Sascha’s body has been through, it has to be even worse for him.

Eventually, Avery has to slow, desperate for more air. He braces his hands on his knees, gasping. Sascha, who, contrary to Avery’s assumptions, isn’t doing as poorly, fidgets but doesn’t rush him. As Avery is working up the will to resume, a cave to his right catches his eye. The opening is a horizontal slat in the stone, a gaping toothless mouth far too similar to the one he hid in beside Forgotten Lake. A sign nearby calls it Skull Cave, claiming the interior was once strewn with human bones. Avery wonders if they’re still in there.

When he tries to speak, Avery only manages a shaky whisper. “Are we gonna make it out of here, Sascha?”

Sascha stares down at him, brow knotted. Avery wonders if he’s trying to figure out how best to lie. Another chorus of howling rises like omens from the earth. A single feline scream heralds the cougars joining in the hunt. Avery meets Sascha’s eyes, his pale brows furrowed over blue-gold irises and pinprick pupils, contracted in the sunlight breaking through the trees.

In the end, Sascha doesn’t lie.

“We should shift,” he says instead.

“What’ll we do with our bags?”

Sascha tugs his shirt over his head, leaving his blond hair ruffled. “Can’t do much with them if we’re dead, can we? Put ‘em behind the fence.” He goes for his jeans, but Avery grabs his hand.

“We’re not getting naked out in the open, you braindead doofus. Let’s go farther into the trees.” Avery shoves Sascha to get him moving.

It’s painfully surreal. Avery rolls Sascha’s clothes, followed by his own, trying to make them take up as little room as possible. Sascha blinks in and out of the aether, then sits by the backpacks, watching Avery roll his neck. He feels played with, like one of those interactive pet toys, moaning on half-dead batteries while their operators watch and chuckle. The trees shudder, then silence falls across the little intersection just beyond Skull Cave, leaving it so still every crack of Avery’s joints feels like laughter before a gunshot.

Halfway through his transformation, the too-familiar, vastly unwelcome cloaking spell drops, and just like that, Avery and Sascha are surrounded. Frozen in place, exposed on the edge of a historical cave remembered only for its bones.

Sascha raises his hackles and puts himself at Avery’s back, but it doesn’t do much when there’s only two of them and Avery is still swollen and torn, his new build not yet finished assembling itself. One wolf darts in, meaning to hobble Avery before his shift can finish, which must have been their plan. Roaring, Sascha swats it away. He also pushes back the second wolf, but the third strike comes from a cougar and a wolf coming at Avery from different sides.

With his bloody palms on the ground, consumed by panic, Avery calls upon the ursine. It argues when he, once again, struggles to maintain control of his mind while allowing the beast to operate their body. The creature wants all of him, but Avery can’t allow it.

His internal battle costs Sascha a blow from a wolf’s thick paw, leaving shallow scratches across his shoulder. Sascha lowers himself, ears back, hissing at the aggressor while he tries to push past the pain as the wounds immediately begin to heal.

The two of them won’t be able to fight off both packs of apex predators. Not for long, not on their own.

A cougar snaps at the wolf that landed a blow on Sascha,yowling a reprimand. That’s right—Sascha is still the alpha’s son. They don’t want to hurthim. Just Avery. He can use that, can’t he? If the ursine will fucking cooperate.

Finally, Avery gets enough of a larynx to roar, sweeping a deformed hand to effortlessly bat the wolf into a tree. It hits the trunk with a yelp. The cougar who had defended Sascha snaps at Avery’s wrist, and Avery backhands that one into an aggressing wolf.

It’s like playing with animated stuffed animals. Even these dangerous, powerful beasts crumple when Avery uses his massive form—to defend, to hobble, to crush a wolf’s hip beneath one clawed foot. The ursine lusts for their blood, and even though Avery doesn’t particularlywantto kill any of them, he almost lets the creature take control.

Wouldn’t they deserve it?

Chaos erupts when a cluster of wolves target Sascha, healed and snarling at Avery’s back. The cougars fold, going after the wolves instead of joining them. Seeing an opportunity, Avery wrenches his body away from the ursine’s puppetry and snatches up both backpacks in one massive hand. He bellows at Sascha, not seeming to share Beryl’s ability to talk in their shifted form. Sascha yowls, swats one of his pack mates out of the way, and runs hot on Avery’s heels.

At first, Avery tries to run on two feet, resulting in him clumsily hitting more than a few taller branches. Reminded of how difficult it was to escape with his feet partially shifted, Avery hesitates long enough to catch the backpack straps in his teeth, then brings his hands to the earth. Once on all fours, instinct takes over, allowing Avery to wind through the worst obstacles with ease. What he does hit, he barely feels as he crashes through.