The Name in the Trees
I didn’t stop until the sounds of the forest were mine alone again.
Miles from where they’d tried to corner me, I found a thick old pine with roots that twisted like a throne and settled against it. My chest rose and fell steady, my muscles still thrumming from the run through the canopy. The air here was damp and rich, the ground soft with needles.
For the first time since waking, I let myself exhale all the way.
The shimmer still clung faintly to my skin, a ghost of the camouflage that had saved me. I lifted my hand and watched as my fingers blurred, the color of the bark bleeding into them until they disappeared entirely. I could still feel them, still flex and curl them, but to my eyes, they’d become part of the forest.
It was strange and right all at once. Like my body had been waiting for me to remember how to do it.
“Who the hell am I?” I muttered under my breath.
The moment the words left my mouth, heat bloomed behind my eyes, sharp and sudden. My vision tunneled.
The forest dissolved, replaced by a flash of candlelight glinting off crystal glasses. A ballroom. Music spilling from a live string quartet. Laughter. Faces turning toward me.
A woman’s voice, proud and fierce: “Ryanna Varelli, my daughter, my heir...”
The name slammed into me like a physical blow, stealing my breath. My vision snapped back to the forest, my palms pressed hard into the earth to keep from swaying.
Ryanna.
I knew it was mine. I felt it in my bones, in the way it made my pulse skip, in the way my body reacted like I’d just been handed a weapon I’d been missing my whole life.
The trees whispered in the wind, but it sounded different now, almost like they were saying it too.
Ryanna Varelli.
A growl echoed faintly in the distance, carried on the breeze. My lips curved in a slow, dangerous smile.
“Good,” I whispered to the night. “Now I know what name to make you curse.”
The growl faded, swallowed by the night, but it left an echo in my chest. Once, that sound might’ve rattled me. Made me move faster. Made me think only of escape.
Not anymore. Now I had a name. My name. And names have power. Especially mine.
I pushed up from the pine’s roots, brushing dirt from my palms, my eyes scanning the shadows above. I could feel the canopy calling to me again, the way the branches had carried me before. It wasn’t just an escape route. It was mine now, my hunting ground.
My lips curled. “Let’s see how you like being the ones looking over your shoulders.”
The forest seemed to shift at my words, the night breeze carrying the scent of pine and damp moss… and faint traces of them. I caught silver first, sharp and metallic, like moonlight on a blade. Then cedar and amber.... the golden wolf. The fourth’s wild heat lingered heavier, more feral. And beneath it all, like ink in water, the cool shadow of black-eyes.
They weren’t together. Not yet. Perfect.
I moved into the trees again, climbing fast, my muscles loose and sure. The shimmer came easier this time, the green of the leaves and the mottled browns of bark wrapping over my skin until I disappeared. From up here, I could see farther, faint movement in the distance where one of them threaded between the trees.
I stayed above him, matching his pace without a sound. Watching. Waiting. A flicker of memory brushed the edge of my thoughts, not of the ballroom, but of standing on a balcony under a full moon, my mother’s hand heavy on my shoulder. “A queen must know her territory better than her enemies. And she must be willing to strike first.”
Strike first.
A thrill buzzed under my skin. I wasn’t here to survive anymore. I was here to make them bleed frustration. To make them second guess every step.
Down below, silver eyes slowed, his head tilting like he felt something. I smiled, crouched low on the branch above him, every instinct in my body urging me forward.
The Hunt was still on. But the rules had just changed.
Silver eyes slowed below me, scanning the trees like he could feel me watching. His gaze swept the canopy once, twice… then narrowed. I stayed perfectly still, letting the shimmer swallow me whole, my heartbeat matching the sway of the leaves.
I could drop on him now. Hit him hard, vanish before the others even knew I was close. The thought made my muscles coil, my grip tighten on the branch.
But then the wind shifted.
A warmer scent threaded through the night air, cedar and amber, deep and rich, the kind of smell that wrapped around you like velvet and dared you to breathe deeper. My pulse skipped, heat sparking low in my belly. The golden wolf.
I turned my head toward the source, tasting the air like the forest itself was guiding me. He was closer than I’d realized, moving steady, unhurried, like he didn’t believe I had the nerve to come to him.
Perfect.
My lips curved into a slow smile. Silver eyes would be easy enough to toy with later, but cedar and amber deserved my full attention tonight.
I ghosted through the branches, leaving the silver-eyed alpha behind without a sound. The canopy became my hunting path again, the leaves whispering against my skin, the bark solid under my hands. Every breath brought his scent stronger, until I caught the faint glint of him through the gaps in the leaves, hair touched gold by moonlight, moving with the loose grace of someone who thought they were safe.
I eased forward, silent as a shadow, already planning my angle. I wasn’t going to kill him. I wasn’t even going to hurt him badly. I was going to remind him that the hunt went both ways now.
And when I was done, cedar and amber would smell like fear.