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I don’t know how I know, but I’m positive of it. I can feel him, or something that tells me he was here; I don’t really know what the fuck it is. The whole bond and how it works is confusing, but I know better than to question it.

“You missed him by about three minutes.”

I whip around so fast I almost fall over with the extra weight of my shadow wings. I’d looked around not thirty seconds ago, and not only had I not seen him, but I didn’t feel him either. Still, there’s no denying he’s here with me.

Despite not spending a lot of time with him, I know his voice.

My heart picks up its pace as I rake my eyes over the shadows that were at my back a moment ago. I know I heard him, yet I don’t see him.

Am I losing it? Maybe I imagined it?

No. I know I heard him.

I take a step toward the trees, drawn to where I heard him, before I remember his little disappearing act the night I met him.

“Ryker?”

My name’s never sounded like that before, not that anyone uses it often.

The beasts don’t talk; my father only ever refers to me asboy,and when people do occasionally know my name, they tend to say it with their voice full of fear, not in…

Awe?

That can’t be right. Why would she everwantto see me?

Despite knowing all of this and knowing what I am, I can’t deny that there’s a smile on her face that wasn’t there a moment ago.

I feel myself slip back into reality, my hold on the shadows fading away.

Why does that make my stomach feel like a rock?

I don’t have more than a second to think about it, though, before she’s moving. Once again shocking me as she runs toward me instead of away.

She slams into me hard enough that I take a step back as her arms band around my torso. She squeezes tight, her face buriedin my chest, and the scent of her hits me even harder than she did.

“Serena.”

I’d meant to say more, though I’m not sure what, but I nearly choke on just her name alone, a lump lodging itself in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow back down.

We stand like that for what feels like forever, yet somehow not long enough. I don’t dare step back, not wanting her to move away, even though I know that’s what's best for her.

Nobody is safe around me, not with who my father is, not with everything I've done.

But even knowing that, I can’t make myself push her away. Instead, it takes all of my self-control to stop from wrapping her up in my shadows and running away with her, taking her back to the cottage where we can be alone, just like we were not that long ago.

But that was before I realized who she was. Before my father returned.

Anyone I brought back to the cabin was in danger with him, but Serena…

When he first came back, I was worried he would hurt her because it would be a good way to remind me of the control he has over me. The same way he’s done in the past when I brought home a bunny or an injured bird and nursed it back to health.

He let me, going so far as to praise my ability to interact with the forest and the animals. I thought he was proud, and maybe in his own twisted way he was, but no matter what he felt, it never stopped him from killing them.

When I was very young, he would kill them and make me watch. I always thought I could be smarter, hide them better, but it never mattered. Somehow, he always found them.

It wasn’t until my eleventh birthday that he made me kill the butterfly whose wing I’d just spent painstaking hours sewing back on.

After that, I only cared for things outside my home or when he was gone.