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Wynter

F inally, I have the human girl in my sights, only yards away and visible through the trees.

When I found her, I expected I’d feel strong emotions… triumph, joy, even anger.

I imagined my heart would hammer, air would rush through my lungs, depriving my brain of oxygen, and there’d be an unfortunate tightness in these cursed mortal pants. All the usual symptoms of being in her presence.

But never once did I picture myself hiding behind the trunk of an old oak tree, frozen with indecision as I battled the wolf tearing at my insides.

I’ve waited many torturous years to see her again. The girl whose sunshine melts the icy winter in my chest. Ignites fire in my blood. Scrambles every thought in my head.

Hers is a name I will never forget. A face I’ve been dreaming about every night since the moment I lost her .

And as always… she is the bane of my existence. The one thing forbidden to me—a prince of Faery—indulged in all things except the one I crave the most.

As I slink deeper into the shadows, my gaze fixed on the sunlight spilling across her bare shoulders, I take slow breaths, fighting the urge to shift into my beast with everything I’ve got. My thoughts swirl and tumble, not one of them rational, my control slipping away.

Don’t make a sound , I tell myself. Don’t fucking move .

I’ve found her… so now what?

Just don’t scare her away .

My bonded wolf, Ivor, presses his warm, sturdy body against my leg, keeping me in place. Probably the only thing holding me together.

I tug a wider gap in moss-covered branches and watch the girl direct a stream of water from a garden hose at a bed of tomatoes tangling with sunflowers in the afternoon heat.

This is someone else’s garden. Not hers. I can tell by the way it smells.

My eyes close as I breathe deeply, mapping her scent. It’s a single, concentrated note in the mix of human smells that drifts on the breeze toward me, allowing me to trace her every movement from the time she entered the yard.

Beyond the garden beds, perched on a rise of shimmering green grass, a large house looms. White columns and window frames drip with ivy, and its red bricks are drenched with the stink of human greed.

During my family’s visits to this realm when I was young, I saw the kind of humans who inhabited such homes. Despite their wealth, they still reeked of hunger. Stank of relentless longing, not for food, but for power, more prestige at any cost.

It’s similar where I come from. The Land of Five. The emerald-and-black city of Talamh Cúig, teeming with fae who scheme for power, while taking whatever they can steal and barter if it’s within the rules of their court.

The girl doesn’t belong in this garden. This house isn’t her home.

The sweat beading her brow is the cost of her labor.

She performs work to earn human money to buy food.

To survive. My own mother, who was also human, served food to strangers at an eating hall, waitressing in Max’s Vinyl City diner before she met my father, the Prince of Air.

Therefore, I am well-informed about human employment and jobs. Grim work without magic. Barely any rest. Such strange customs, slaving to earn just enough money to live like paupers.

Despite her toil, the summer girl’s limbs move with grace and ease.

Her dark hair flows around bare sun-kissed shoulders, and a gentle smile curves her bow-shaped mouth.

She looks happy. Untroubled. Unaware that a predator stalks through the darkening woods, his teeth and bones aching with the need to let go and become something wilder. To claim her as his. My bones. My need.

Can’t she feel me shivering nearby? Why doesn’t she turn and look?

But humans have always been blissfully ignorant creatures. Choosing to remain oblivious to the monsters inhabiting the shadows. Like all Earth-dwellers, this one is reckless and, despite her mortal weakness, always rushing headfirst into danger without cause or reason .

That’s how she found herself captured by the Shade Court eight years ago, at the tender age of seventeen. She likely fell for the Wild Hunt’s sinister glamour. Was entranced by a pair of dark, glittering eyes. A slyly feigned smile. Landolin Ravenseeker himself.

Come with us, sweetling , he probably said.

Come sample delights and horrors that’ll make you spin forever, wide-eyed and astonished.

A white palm extended toward her. Then a single stomp of a horse’s hoof jingled a web of gold trinkets into a haunting melody.

Bells in the distance—soft at first, then louder, sounding a death knell.

A moment later, she’d have been in the saddle, seated before the Wild Hunt’s leader, and riding into hell. The whole thing quick and simple and over in a matter of heartbeats. A life stolen. Nothing good gained. Only heartache. In her land and ours.

Fucking Landolin.

Then, a year and a day of her life flashes by in a haze, every minute spent dancing, playing the fool for the grinning, spitting fae of the Raven Realm. If it weren’t for my sister, Merri, the summer girl would still be there, spinning mindlessly day and night.

Perhaps forever.

Beside me, Ivor growls, his black fur ruffling in the warm breeze, hackles raised as he presses his weight more firmly against my side.

“Calm down” I tell my wolf, even though I’m the one losing my shit. “The girl is fine. Told you she would be.”

Ivor whines and turns his shivering snout toward the woods, ready to leave the leafy bounds of Lake Grenlynn’s suburban sprawl.

Unlike me, Ivor despises the Earth Realm and can’t wait to return to Talamh Cúig.

But when I was a boy, my parents—a fae prince and his human mate—often brought my sister and me to visit our great aunt.

I fell in love with human cities, the intoxicating mix of beauty and decay.

The way the people lived their short, brutal lives without magic, careening often fearlessly toward their deaths.

I may be fae royalty, but I’m a halfling and have always longed to understand the human part of me that allows half-truths to slide from my mouth with only the barest wince of pain.

“Go home if you want,” I tell Ivor. “The portal should still be open. I’ll be fine alone.”

Orange eyes stare balefully at me as he faces the yard again with a resigned huff.

No way I’m leaving. Not yet. I’ve waited so many years to see the girl again, spent weeks dropping into human cities, searching, not finding a trace of her until three days ago. Finally. In this town. In this woodland and this garden.

I can’t leave, but I cannot stay forever.

So why am I here? To make sure she’s safe. That much is certain. I came to the Earth Realm to protect her, so she’ll never become the Shade Court’s toy again.

At least that’s the tale I tell myself.

In this realm, I can shift into my wolf form if needed, hide my fae appearance with subtle glamours, but my Elemental earth magic is weak here. Now that I’ve found her, I can watch her, follow her, sleep in nearby woods, but the longer I do so, my powers will wane.

Before long, I’ll need to return to the Land of Five and bathe in the renewing waters of the Lake of Spirits or get stuck here forever. Maybe even in my wolf form. Time’s ticking, and I’m wasting it, staring like a love-sick mutt with my tongue hanging out.

And if not to protect her, what else do I want?

What does the blood burning in my veins tell me? My shaking limbs? The answer is simple. Before I go, I need to feel her gaze trail over my skin. I want her to see me. To remember.

As she sets a sprinkler in front of another flowerbed, the summer girl glances up, her free hand scraping her brow, smiling and squinting at the sun and watching an eagle glide above. Her pleasure shivers through my body, reshaping my flesh.

Her wide-set green eyes flick down, then back toward the woods, scanning the trees around me. As I begin to hide from her, sliding behind the oak, for a bare moment, our eyes meet. Shock, bliss, then pain shudders through me, tearing tendons and reconfiguring bones.

“Fuck,” I grind out, nausea making me retch.

Ivor whines, and I groan through gritted elongating teeth as the change completes itself and my skin splits and fur breaks through. Great fucking timing. One look and I go full wolf.

Pressing my muzzle against his face, I whine in protest. My tongue lolls out, my panted breath hot in my lungs, drying out the roof of my mouth.

I step from behind the tree, Ivor close behind, and stop at the edge of the yard, letting out a gut-wrenching howl. Something small and metal drops from Summer’s hands—a garden tool—as her eyes meet mine again.

Girl sights wolf. Fae imprints on human.

We stare at each other, the spell broken when she blinks and grimaces as if she can sense my strangeness, knows I’m not a normal wolf. That I’m… other.

She takes an unsteady step in my direction. The air shimmers, and the gossamer outline of two bodies form behind her—a man and a child, dressed like human gardeners from decades ago. Fucking ghosts. Annoying but harmless.

I falter, and my body jerks toward the girl.

For a split second, I think she might actually come to me. But she doesn’t.

Before I do something stupid, I nudge Ivor’s side, and we run toward the woods.