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He frowned. "Why not?"

"Because I said so," she sniffed, chin raised.

Because she'd heard what he was thinking.

Because his thoughts were always so loud when he was near her. Little flutters of confusion, longing, heat. Curiosity buzzed like static between them. He didn't know she could hear them, not really. He wouldn't understand.

He tugged at her braid again, gentler this time. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy."

"With the wind?"

"With life."

Their eyes met and lingered. His grin faded. Something else crept in. Something that made Seren feel all warm and tingly inside her chest.

"You don't have to be scared," he said quietly.

"I'm not," she lied.

His hand lingered at the edge of her braid. Then, slowly, he let it fall.

Chapter 35

As time slowly crawled towards Hagan's sixteenth birthday, some days felt like borrowed time - moments tucked between prophecy and tradition, between what had been written and what they could still write for themselves.

Hagan had become a near-permanent fixture in the Oracle's cottage, though he liked to claim otherwise.

"I'm just here to carry things," he'd had said with mock gravity the first time he appeared, strapping her gear bag across his back like it was a sacred duty.

And now...

"Seren, can’t you just be happy with one pair of lenses? And what is all this other stuff?" he groaned in mock agony as he trudged behind her.

"I need something to plug my ears. You complain like the cook in the longhouse." Seren muttered, adjusting her camera as they hiked toward the marsh.

He groaned. "You've got three lenses, a tripod, a pouch of herbs, and something wrapped in beeswax that smells like old feet."

"That's the fermented honeyroot."

"It still smells like old feet."

She glanced sideways at him, hiding her grin. "Honestly, your wolf does kind of look like a mule from the side angle. That's probably why the critters keep scattering."

He stopped mid-step, scandalized. "A mule?"

"Not a big one," she said sweetly. "More like a fluffy forest donkey. Good for carrying heavy loads."

"You wound me."

But later that evening, Hagan sat hunched over a small stack of printed photographs Seren had laid out on the kitchen table. He was quiet, more than usual. His brows were drawn together, eyes moving slowly from frame to frame.

There was a stillness in her images that he hadn't noticed when she'd taken them-an understanding, a reverence. Animals caught mid-movement, eyes blinking into her lens like they knew her. Like she wasn't separate from the wild, but part of it.

One image showed his wolf form in profile-sunlight behind him, tail low, ears tilted toward something out of frame. And damn it, from the angle she'd caught him... he did look a little like a shaggy mountain mule.

But he also looked free. Fierce. Himself.