Blood in the Snow

Rhea Voss hated snow.

Not because of the cold,she was used to that. Crescent Valley was blanketed in frost nearly ten months of the year. It wasn't even the way the snow stuck to her boots or soaked through her cloak. It was what the snow hid that made her blood feel cold.

It buried tracks. Covered blood. Silenced death.

Rhea tugged her hood tighter against the wind as she moved between frostbitten trees, her basket rattling at her hip. She’d come out to forage bloodroot and graycap;herbs that only bloomed under the first snow of midwinter,but something had felt wrong since she left her cottage.

The wind didn’t sound right.

She knelt by the base of a twisted yew tree, scraping gently in the snow. Her gloved fingers brushed soft petals there. Bloodroot. Enough for two batches. She reached to pluck it when

A growl split the silence.

Low. Animal. But not quite.

Her body froze. The sound hadn’t come from far maybe thirty, forty paces through the thickets. It wasn’t the usual cry of a wolf or a bear. It was wet, labored. Painful.

She stood slowly, adjusting the knife she kept strapped to her thigh. Her breath puffed in slow clouds, heart pounding as she moved toward the sound.

The snow deepened the farther she went, clinging to her legs like fingers. Trees closed in. Shadows twisted. Then she saw him.

A man,if he could even be called that lay slumped at the base of a tree, blood spreading beneath him like a black flower. He was completely naked, save for the tangled mat of dark hair across his head and chest. His body was marked with gashes that pulsed, healing too fast. His back rose and fell with shallow breaths.

And on his shoulder, burned into the skin, was a mark: three crescent claw-marks, glowing faintly silver beneath the blood.

Rhea’s throat tightened.

She stepped forward, snow crunching beneath her. His eyes flew open.

Silver. Not gray. Not blue. Glowing silver.

"Don’t touch me,” he rasped.

His voice was deep, animalistic like a growl shaped into words.

Rhea didn’t move. “You’re bleeding.”

“I said,don’t.”

“You’ll die if I don’t help you,” she snapped, kneeling beside him anyway. His blood was hot, almost too hot. Steam curled where it touched the snow.

“I’ve died before,” he whispered. Then his eyes closed.

Rhea cursed under her breath and dropped her basket. Whatever he was, he wasn’t human;not fully. But he was hurt. Alone. And something inside her;stupid or brave couldn’t just walk away.

She dragged him, groaning under his weight, through the snow and back to her cottage.

By the time she laid him down before the hearth, his skin had started to shimmer faintly in the firelight. Like moonlight on water. Her fingers trembled as she cleaned the blood from his neck.

She didn’t notice the tiny silver crescent glowing just beneath her own collarbone until much later.

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