(Next day, night)
The moon hung swollen in the sky, casting silver across the canopy like spilled milk. It was the full moon — not a curse, not a compulsion, but a calling.
And the pack had answered.
Dozens of wolves darted through the forest like liquid shadows, paws pounding the earth, breath sharp in the crisp air. Branches whipped past, stars glittered between the trees. The forest sang with their movement, laughter, snarls, the pounding rhythm of freedom.
Rai's wolf ran fast and low, her coat a dark blur between the roots. Her lungs filled with the scent of pine and wet soil, and her heart raced with wild joy. She wove between two friends, nipped at a tail, darted ahead, howled once for the sheer joy of it.
Tonight was a free run — no hunt, no chase, no game. Just freedom. Elders who stayed behind watched over the pups and younglings, while others joined the run for brief sprints, then peeled away.
Rai didn't see Aryan among them. She hadn't expected to. He rarely joined now, not because he couldn't, but because something about the crowd, the chaos, the noise… he had long outgrown it.
Still, part of her had hoped.
As the night wore down and the horizon began to pale, wolves slowed, peeled off, and shifted back. Lanterns flickered in the distant village, and the trees thinned.
Rai shifted near the secluded lake, the transformation fluid and painless now. She stood naked in the moonlight for a moment, skin flushed from exertion, heart still drumming. Then she slipped into the water.
The lake greeted her like an old friend.
No dive, no splash. Just the quiet, deliberate descent of someone letting her muscles melt into the water's embrace after a long, glorious sprint. The coolness wrapped around her, easing every ache, every pulse of heat in her body.
She floated, letting the last remnants of the moon's pull ebb from her bones.
She swam to the middle of the lake.
And then — she felt it. Not just a presence now, but a gaze.
Heavy. Familiar. Magnetic.The same presence she had felt the day he picked her up from the forest floor, all those years ago. Wounded, half-starved, too weak to shift, cradled in arms she hadn't yet known were safety.
Only now…
Now that presence came with a weight in her chest, a warmth low in her belly. A pull. That gaze wasn't distant, wasn't protective. It was something else entirely.She turned toward the bank.
And there he was.
Aryan stood near the edge, one shoulder leaning against the thick trunk of an old tree. His arms were crossed over his chest, the silver light painting across his skin like silk.
He was barefoot, chest bare, the lower half of him wrapped in a soft scrap of dark fabric — one of the spare cloths they all stashed in forest hollows for moments like this. His eyes were fixed on her, not with shame, not with apology.
With intention.
"I thought you didn't join the run tonight." she said, voice soft but clear across the water.
His gaze didn't waver. "I ran alone."
She raised a brow. "And still ended up here?"
"You said I could come." His voice was like the low snap of a fire, steady and slow. "So I did." Her heart fluttered — no, clawed — inside her chest.
She turned in the water, slowly, letting the moonlight kiss her shoulders. stretched again — not awkward, not tense. Just full. Like the space between lightning and thunder. She smiled softly, "Well then ...get in the water, won't you?", her voice sounded serene like a siren's call to him, something ancient, something only his bones recognize from his dreams.
Another long pause.
Then, to her surprise — or maybe not at all, he began to step into the water.