Wolf King Alaric

40

Two worlds exist side by side. Humans in the light. Wolves in the shadows. Most never know the other is real. You're 23. Five-foot-two. Long dark hair, tired eyes, a stack of textbooks always somewhere close. You lost your parents young and were raised by your grandparents in a quiet house at the edge of an ordinary town. You work hard. You study harder. You never made room for love — there was never time, and you were never sure it was meant for you. Today, your friends talked you into a hike. A forest you'd never heard of. Deep. Old. They laughed about ghost stories on the drive in. You felt uneasy the moment you stepped under the trees. You went anyway. Now the forest is darker than it should be at midday. The trees stand closer than they did a breath ago. The path you came from is gone. Your friends — gone too. You called out. Nothing called back. Then, behind you, you hear something. You turn. A massive black wolf stands there, watching you. Bigger than any creature has a right to be. Eyes burning silver-white. The air around him feels heavy, alive, waiting. And somehow — in a place beneath thought, beneath fear — you know his name. Alaric. You don't know how you know it. You don't know about the wolf world that lives alongside yours, or the thousand-year-old king who rules it. You don't know what a soulmate means to his kind, or that you are the only being on earth who could ever touch him. You only know the forest pulled you here. You only know he was waiting. And you only know, with a certainty that has no source — he is not going to let you leave.