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Chapter 3

There wasno way Bryan could sleep that night.

His heart pounded as he stared at the clock ticking away next to his bed, counting down the minutes to midnight. He planned to enter the forest that night. Finding the Direlings had quickly become an obsession. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, completely possessed by the idea that this was the answer to everything. He was driven forward, unable to stop himself.

When the clock struck twelve he left his room, stopping to check on the minister's door. Inside, the man was snoring loudly. Bryan snuck downstairs, then outside. He shifted and began to run, just a trot at first and then a full charge toward the edge of town as fast as his paws could carry him. A short while later, he arrived at his parents’ house, which was dark. The kitchen window was unlocked, as he expected. Shifting back to human form, he pushed it open and crawled inside.

Silently, Bryan crept into his parents’ room. His mother and father slept in separate beds now, his father close to the window he liked to spend so much time looking out of. Bryan went to the desk with his father’s old work materials, found the folded site map of the clearing project, and tucked it into his pocket.

Bryan stopped as he passed Lukas's room. He cracked the door open and peeked inside. It still didn’t seem like long ago that they'd shared this room. His old bed was still there, on the opposite side of the room from his brother's. Lukas slept quietly, the blanket thrown halfway off his body. Bryan quietly entered and tucked his brother back in. He looked down at the boy's face and felt heaviness in his chest.

"I love you, little brother," he whispered.

Lukas stirred and opened his eyes, but Bryan was already gone.

He passed the graveyard and entered the field beyond it. He skidded to a halt when he reached the wall and shifted back to his human form. He peered over the top of the moss-covered stones at the vast clearing of tree stumps that stretched out to the dark face of the forest. It was like another graveyard, one far more eerie than the one next to his parents’ house. He sat down and unfolded the map on the ground, using the moonlight to read it. None of it made any sense to him. There were a series of red circles marked all across the map, but no labels describing what they meant. How would he find the Direlings?

As he looked back out at the Grimault Forest, he felt an odd tension in his gut. Something urged him to go forward.

Why am I doing this?he asked himself as he hauled his body over the wall. The forest was calling to him like the vast space at the edge of a cliff. He felt the pull of the void, begging him to leap.

He shifted again and charged. His paws hammered the ground as he barreled around and over the massive tree stumps. As the forest grew closer it became monstrous, the trees far larger than he could ever have expected. He looked up at them with wide eyes, cold fear running through his body, but he didn't stop. He passed through the field of logging machinery sitting at the edge of the forest like slumbering metal beasts and tore into the forest. He kept running, bounding over the moss-covered boulders and downed logs that had been rotting away for centuries in the dark understory. It felt like he was fleeing something, only he was running the wrong way...

The air around him grew cold and dank. Finally, he stopped. Looking behind him, he saw the lights of New Pixia glowing dimly through the dense trees. It was very far away. He was inside the Grimault Forest now, the place he'd grown up believing was the most dangerous place in the world. As he moved onwards, deeper into its belly, he wondered if perhaps he had a death wish.

Had he come here to die?

No.He shook the thought away. He refused to believe it. But who could blame him? Everything and everyone had its breaking point. If plucked at enough, anything could eventually unravel. Maybe he was just unraveling.

He continued, moving carefully through the foliage. Soon it became impossible to move at any faster pace than a slow walk. He sniffed at the air, trying to catch a scent trail that would lead him to the right place. The canopy stretched up endlessly above him, blocking the moon. Soon there was barely any light. He turned around and could no longer see the edge of the forest—he could no longer see much of anything. He lowered his nose to the ground, using his sense of smell to guide him, but he quickly became overwhelmed by the vastness of the place. There were so many smells—far more than he was used to. But out of everything, there was one vague musk that he detected, like the dimmest glimmer of light in a fog. Its warmth stood out amongst the dingy, musty scent of decay that pervaded everything, and something told him to pursue it.

It felt like every tree was watching him, reaching towards him with their spindly branches. Every snap made his ears twitch and his tail straighten. He kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to catch them moving towards him.

"Trees," he muttered. "Why I am afraid of trees? There's more to be frightened of than trees."

He walked for some time, still following that vague scent. The forest seemed incredibly silent. There was no wind, no sound of insects, nothing. He stopped and raised his nose. It'd suddenly vanished.

Bryan scrambled up a slippery boulder, sniffing frantically at the air. He thought he caught the trail again and dashed down, but it again eluded him. Every time he thought his nose picked up the scent it seemed to drift away, like a taunting ghost. He ran blindly trying to find it, but nothing smelled familiar. He spun around, trying to regain his bearings. The forest surrounded him.

He shifted back to human form and pulled out the map, turning it this way and that, trying to make sense of it, trying to find some kind of landmark. "This way," he said to himself. He hurried forward and shouted as a branch snagged his arm. He tripped and stumbled into a large spiderweb, which blanketed his face and sent him into a panic. He broke into a run, shifting midstride, but suddenly the ground gave way beneath his paws and he tumbled headfirst down a small slope and crashed to the bottom in a heap.

"Dammit," he groaned, shaking away the stars that spun wildly around his vision. Then suddenly the scent was back, only this time it was powerful and all-encompassing. Bryan pushed himself up onto his paws, and when he looked up he learned where the scent had come from.

Surrounding him on all sides was a group of vicious-looking Alpha wolves, fangs bared, eyes glowing like fire. Bryan screamed in surprise and shrank back.

"Who are you?" he asked, though he already knew the answer. "What do you want?"

He'd found the Direlings—or rather, they'd found him.

Out of the group of warriors, three had intricate necklaces of colored gemstones strung around their necks. The one in the middle had jet-black fur crisscrossed with wicked scars, and wore a necklace of red stones. He advanced from the group, coming towards Bryan. He was massive, so much larger than the average wolf. It was his scent that Bryan had been following. Bryan was frightened, but he held his ground and stared back at the black Alpha.

"It’s you," the Alpha murmured.

Bryan shivered.That voice. It was like a rolling thunder that penetrated to his very bones. He knew that voice.

"I've been waiting for you," the beastly Alpha said. "We'vebeen waiting for you."

A cold dread crept through his body as he realized how he knew that voice. He'd heard it in his dreams.