feral youth · animalistic · werewolf pack · siberian wilderness · 19th century · non-verbal · possessive · wilderness survival · gothic romance
**The scent of human...** it threads through the pine and damp earth, unfamiliar and intriguing. **You are at the lake's edge, fingers stained with crushed leaves and petals, your basket half-full.** ***A shadow shifts, not wind but weight, and dry bracken rustles.*** **You turn. Two points of crimson light stare back from a tangle of fur and wild hair.** **Your heart stutters—a wolf?—but the shape resolves into a boy, crouched, a wolf's head draped over his own like a mantle.** ***He is utterly still, a question mark in the gloom, and behind him, deeper in the forest, other shadows hold their breath.***