For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

She caught his eye, wildly jerking her chin toward the falling sentinel in its spreading pool of rot. But Fife shook his head, fear in his eyes, and Red remembered what Eammon said in the tower— that Fife coming with him was too dangerous.

That someone already fallen would be looking to pull others in.

“How long can you last?” The thing advanced toward Eammon on twisted legs. One snapped, made weak by calcifying shadow. He dropped to his knees and kept coming, crawling through the rotten earth. “Not long, not long alone. Especially not now, now that the Wilderwood smells something fresh.”

Dark circles stood out around Eammon’s eyes as he knelt, pressed his bleeding palm to the earth again. This time, the shadow-rot didn’t recede at all. It inched unceasingly forward, and the leaves it touched on the forest floor crumpled, withered.

He couldn’t stop it alone.

Her body made the decision before her mind could make her stop. Red lurched, throwing herself out of the grip of whoever held her. They were surprised enough to let her go, and she slipped on the leaves, backpedaling away from the advancing tide of rotten ground.

Eammon’s gaze snapped to her, the frustration in his eyes blazing to fear. He shook his head, sharp, but Red ignored him. She moved quietly along the edge of the shadow-pit, hands opening and closing along with the bloom of forest magic in her middle. It pulled her toward the Wolf, the bond between them making it easier to grasp, easier to direct. The specter of dark memories tried to rear up from the corners of her mind, but her fear for Eammon eclipsed it, gave it no room. Power sang down her veins, washed them green.

The Wilderwood still seemed wrung out, exhausted and pushed to its limits. But when Red twitched her fingers, the branches quivered.

Eammon bared his teeth. He cut the air with his hand—go back— but Red shook her head. Another step closer, power coalescing—

And she stepped on a twig.

The crack could’ve been a spine, for how loud it sounded. Red

froze, hand outstretched toward Eammon. For the first time since she’d known him, the Wolf looked terrified.

The creature raised his nose to the wind. Sniffing. “And oh, here it is.” The shadow-bloated head swiveled to face Red. “Fresh blood.”

The word was a lunge, and the seconds stretched too long, her heartbeats coming in measured ticks. Beat and the creature launched in her direction, beat and its dark-rotting hand raised, beat and the once-human nails elongated to claws.

Beat and Eammon sprang in front of her. The claws raked him instead, slicing through fabric and flesh.

Magic rioted in her middle, the sight of Eammon’s blood finally giving space to memories of all the ways it could go wrong. It shivered in her grip, the ease their marriage had bought slipping away as Eammon crumpled before her. Magic wasn’t the only way to heal the breach, though, and the glint of the knife as it fell from his hand to the ground was a sharp, clear reminder even as her magic slipped toward chaos.

Damn his rules. Red grabbed the dagger and slit her palm.

Her hand slammed to the dirt, blood seeping into the forest floor. Her intention was a scream in her throat, reverberating through every part of her, too focused to be ignored. “Stop!”

The shadow-pit obeyed.

It wasn’t slow, not this time. The edges of the rotted ground shifted backward, surging toward the roots of the sentinel, disappearing beneath them. The tree righted itself with a boom, shock waves skittering over the forest floor. Distantly, Red was aware of those people at the fringes falling backward, unable to keep their balance on unsteady ground.

A moment of silence, of stillness. The creature watched her with wide eyes, still swimming in shadow. Eammon looked from the bloody dagger to Red’s hands subsumed in dirt, horror on his face.

And something in Red . . . shifted. The tide of her magic turned, no longer rushing out but rushing in.

Rushing in, and bringing the Wilderwood with it.

Something slithered against her hand in the dirt. A tendril of root, working its way into the cut in her skin. The forest laying claim. It had a taste of her, and wanted more.

If you give the Wilderwood blood, it won’t stop there.

Pain brought a snarl to her mouth, but the sound that ripped through the clearing didn’t come from her. It came from Eammon.

He lurched from the ground, his scarred and leaking hands closing around her shoulders, wrenching her out of the dirt. The slithering feeling of roots against the cut sharpened, then let go as her hands came free of the ground.

Eammon crouched, slamming his hand to the forest floor, still churned with Red’s blood. No new cuts in his skin. Instead, changes, like that day in the library when he healed her cheek: Bark closed around his forearms like vambraces, the veins in his neck and beneath his eyes going green. Emerald ringed his amber irises, until no white was left.

“Leave her,” Eammon growled at the now-healed sentinel, at the surrounding Wilderwood. His voice was layered, resonant, like it echoed through leaves. “This one isn’t yours.”

The Wilderwood shivered. It gave a sound almost like a sigh.

Eammon’s breath came in pants as he collapsed on his knees next to Red. His chest bloomed crimson and green in three stripes, more blood coming as he ripped a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt and tied it messily around her hand.

Then he sat still, eyes searching hers as green slowly leached away, wide and terrified and so tired.

A groan split the moment in two. Eammon flinched.

The creature on the sentinel’s roots twitched. Parts of it shrank— the claws that had rent Eammon’s middle contracted back into the shape of a human hand, the milky eyes that had been wide as saucers grew smaller, grew blue. His monstrous height halved, his legs righted themselves, broken bones snapping back together and ripping