Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Of course it would rain.

Because why not. A nice, cinematic touch. Lara was pretty sure the universe was a fan of drama. And mud. Drama in the mud. Her boots squelched miserably, her shoulder ached from the fall, and her hands still smelled faintly of gunpowder and blood. Roth’s blood.

She didn’t look at her hands.

Instead, she pressed into the ruined corridor of the temple. Moss-covered stone, broken statues with faces worn smooth by time or fury or both. It was dark. Damp. Echoing weirdly. She’d found shelter here before. This one was... deeper.

Quiet.

Too quiet.

Her breath misted in the cold air and fog curled low along the ground. Like the place was breathing, just a little. Just enough.

“Okay,” she muttered, patting down her pistol. One mag left. The rifle was a lost cause after the river. The climbing axe she still had. Good. Dependable. Smashy.

The stone corridor narrowed ahead into a dark arch. Carvings along the walls—men with spears, wolves with eyes like suns. Weird that she hadn’t seen this part of the temple before. Weird that it was just here.

She hated weird.

She stepped through the arch.

The thing waiting on the other side of it exhaled.

No warning. No footsteps. Just a low, guttural breath like old leather tearing. Yellow eyes opened in the dark—glowing faintly, focused sharply. A body uncurling from the shadows, too big to be human, but shaped like one if you squinted wrong. Fur. Bone. Broken armor fused to skin in places. Teeth that gleamed like wet stone.

It didn’t growl.

It bowed.

Slightly. Head low, wolf-tilted.

Lara blinked.

“...Hi?” she offered, because talking to monsters wasn’t even top five weird anymore.

It moved like it remembered being human once, maybe. Slow. Careful. It sniffed the air. Then it lunged.

She dodged. Barely. The thing's claws scraped stone as it hit the wall and rebounded like a springtrap. No roar, no sound, just movement. Fast. Too fast. Her pistol barked once, twice, missed both times. She ducked under a swipe and rolled, axe up, aiming for the neck—

It bit her.

Right shoulder. Deep.

White-hot pain flared—fast and wrong, not like a bullet or blade, but something sinking in and staying, like a fire that burned backwards. She screamed. Involuntarily. Axe fell from her hand, clattered across the floor. The monster reeled back, shaking its head. Breathing heavily.

She scrambled back against the stone. Blood on her arm. The bite already knitting at the edges. No. That wasn't possible. That—

“What are you?” she gasped, choking down the bile rising.

The creature looked at her. Just... looked. And for a second, something ancient flickered there. Tired. Sad.

Then it rushed her again, fast and final.

She didn't dodge this time. Throwing herself after her axe, she met it. Axe in hand. Two steps forward, steel arcing. It howled when it was hit, high and wrong, but she kept going—because it was her or it, and she'd lost too much already. Roth was dead. Her friends were dying. She would not fall here.

One last blow, right through its neck.

It collapsed at her feet, twitching. Not fighting. Just... falling apart. Finally.

Its breathing slowed.

She knelt beside it, because—God help her—she felt sorry for it. Whatever it was. The eyes that looked up at her were human again. For a heartbeat.

He smiled.

Not with teeth. Not sharp.

Just peace.

Then he was gone.

She didn’t sleep that night. Couldn’t. Her body felt wrong, her skin too tight. Like something new had started inside her and hadn’t figured out how to stop.

Someone up there in the heavens had a sick sense of humor.

Maybe Roth had passed the joke along. “Watch her try this with one arm mostly numb and three psychos with machetes closing in. Bet you a golden coin she manages to win.”

She was bleeding. Again. No surprise.

What was new was the hot-cold-something crawling just under her skin.

Like panic, if panic had claws.

She pressed her back to the cliff wall, breathing through gritted teeth. No way out but through them. Cliff too steep to climb, the path behind her collapsed from a lucky grenade. Or unlucky, depending how you looked at it.

Her fingers curled around the climbing axe.

She could smell them. Before she heard them. That was new too.

The sweat. The blood. One of them hadn’t bathed in days—weeks maybe. Another was chewing dried fish. Salt and rot and smoke, too much information all at once. She gritted her teeth.

The crawling inside her surged.

A beat in her chest—off rhythm. Like a muscle flexing that she hadn’t meant to move. Hands twitched. Vision flared. Colors brightened. One heartbeat, everything was normal. The next—

Everything hurt. But also didn’t.

Her bones felt wrong.

Skin too tight. Joints pulled like taffy.

She almost dropped the axe.

No time. The first Solarii rounded the bend.

She moved.

Fast. Too fast. She was on him before he could shout. Axe, temple, clean. His body crumpled before his brain caught up. She used it as cover, ducking behind it as the other two yelled, weapons raised.

The pain in her chest rose again. Her skin twitched like it wanted to split open.

No. Not now. Not ever. She had too much to do. She couldn't be whatever this was. Not while Sam was still out there, not while people were dying, not while she still had breath left to fight.

She clenched her teeth, closed her eyes for a second, and pushed. Like you did with a bad knee or a cracked rib or the taste of blood in your mouth.

Later, body. Not now.

The crawling feeling slipped back. Not gone. But quieter. Obedient.

She opened her eyes, rolled under the swing of a machete, and ended the fight two breaths later.

When it was over, she wiped the axe clean, her hands shaking harder than she wanted to admit.

The silence pressed in.

“Whatever this is,” she muttered to the empty air, “you don’t get to win. Not today.”

Then she limped on.

Chapter Text

It started the way memories always did lately — uninvited and sharp, like a paper cut under a bandage.

One minute, Lara was staring into her tea, wondering why her shoulder still ached in the rain. Next minute—

She was back in the dim corner of a Japanese medical tent, with the too-white blankets and the too-silent air and the smell of salt water and antiseptic.

Sam woke up with a sound halfway between a gasp and a cough. Sudden. Like she'd been underwater and didn't realize until she was breathing again.

Lara nearly dropped her tea.

Sam blinked. Disoriented. “Wha—where—”

Lara was already by her side. “You’re okay. It’s over. I’ve got you.”

Sam looked at her. Just looked.

Too long.

Lara didn’t flinch. Not externally. She didn’t let herself.

Sam's eyes flicked, just once, down to Lara’s hands. Her nails. Short now. Still a little cracked. Like they were remembering being claws.

The memory of Lara changing into… something during the fight with Mathias almost materialized between them.

Then Sam swallowed. “Did we make it out?”

“We did.”

“Himiko?”

“Gone.”

Pause.

The pause was a canyon.

“You were there,” Sam said quietly. “I saw you. Before…”

She didn’t finish. Her voice didn’t even shake.

Lara waited. Waited for the questions. The accusations. The what the hell was that, Lara?

Instead, Sam looked away. 

Lara exhaled. Not relief. Just breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

They never did talk about it.

But Lara still woke up remembering that look. Sam hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t run.

She’d just seen.

And sometimes, that was worse.

There were better ideas.

This wasn’t one of them.

She knew it. But she'd needed to get away, to find out what the hell happened to her. 

The cabin was old enough to have ghosts and just sturdy enough to discourage them.

Lara had found it on a satellite map — a smudge of grey roof tucked between a forest and a forgotten ridgeline in Northumberland. No road. No signal. No plumbing. Which, in her head, equaled perfect.

After Yamatai, after Himiko, after the Wolf, she didn’t want crowds. She didn’t want talking. She wanted moss. Trees. Maybe a cave or two, just for nostalgia.

So she packed light, told no one, and hiked in alone.

Inside the cabin, she found a mirror. A full-length one, in an old mountaineer’s cabin near the northern coast. Talk about weird.

There was dust on everything, but the mirror was intact. Leaning against a wall.

It was perfect.

She didn’t take much time to unpack before setting it up across from her and wiping it down. Stripped down to underclothes. Cleared a space. Took a breath.

Okay. So she was going to shift. On purpose.

Nothing about this screamed intelligent decision, except maybe the part where she had water nearby, and a blanket. Oh, and a first aid kit. That part was probably wise.

“Right,” she muttered to herself. “Just... think about it. Call it up. Let it come.”

It wasn’t hard to find, that thing inside her. The pull. The edge of it. It lived just under the surface now. Always humming.

She didn’t need to call it. She just needed to let go. And she did.

For half a second, it was like falling into a fever. And then the pain started.

Bones rearranged. Muscles tore and re-knit themselves faster than they should. Skin stretched. Limbs cracked. Her vision blurred out and back in again. She dropped to her knees with a half-choked scream, unable to stop shaking. Not this time. No pushing it away. No shoving it down.

She let it happen. Let it win. And when the haze finally cleared—

She stood.

Four legs. Not two.

The world exploded around her in ways she hadn't expected. Color lost some edges. Sound became sharper. Her ears flicked—on their own—tracking birds outside, a squirrel under the floorboards, the wind breathing through gaps in the windows.

But scent—

God, scent was everything.

Dust. Wood. Her own skin. Old leather. Something sharp and metal nearby. A squirrel. Again. Squirrel was very interesting.

She stumbled forward and stopped.

Mirror.

She saw herself.

Dark grey wolf. Browner muzzle. Pale legs and belly like snow touched her. Yellow eyes—not glowing. Just... hers.

She didn’t recognize her face. Not at first. Then she tilted her head. And knew.

Still her. Different now, but still her.

For all of five seconds, that was enough.

Then panic. New panic. How did she stop?

How did she turn back?

She forced the panic down — she couldn't drown in emotion. She concentrated on intent. She wanted to change back.

The pain returned like an old friend with a bat. Worse, if possible. Unfolding. Shrinking. Shrinking wrong. Her spine felt like it imploded and her hands—hands again—scrabbled against the floor, reaching for something that wasn’t there.

She changed back.

Naked, shivering, gasping on the wood floor like she’d been drowning.

Then she passed out.

Face-first in the dust.

She woke up with the grace of a sack of potatoes dropped off a truck.

And about the same number of functional joints.

Everything hurt. Everything. Muscles she didn’t even know she had. Wrists. Ribs. Ankles. Her ears felt like they’d wrestled a blender. Her teeth ached. Teeth. That was a new one.

Lara groaned, rolled halfway onto her side, and decided that was enough movement for the next five minutes.

The air was cold. The blanket she’d prepared for herself was somewhere over near the wood stove, which — great — meant she hadn’t made it that far. She was naked. Also great. The floor was about as forgiving as expected.

She propped herself up on one elbow and looked around.

The mirror stood across from her.

And in the frost-ringed glass, the memory of the wolf shape echoed just faintly — like her brain still hadn’t entirely put it back in the toybox.

Dark grey. Brown muzzle. Pale legs. A body that didn’t belong to her, but moved like it did. She touched her jaw absently. Still her. Just... in a way that scared the hell out of her.

She should’ve been panicking again.

But all she could feel, at that exact moment, was a grim sort of pride. Because she’d done it. And survived. And now she had questions. So many questions.

The rest of the day was spent half-wrapped in a blanket, bruised, hunched over her laptop like some kind of unwashed cryptid, searching every corner of the internet for anything even remotely credible.

She lasted six hours.

By the end of it, she had:

• Thirty-seven open tabs

• Four different werewolf origin theories

• A Reddit thread that devolved into a Twilight vs Underworld war

• Two academic articles on lycanthropy as medieval hysteria

• And one YouTube video of a man barking at the moon while shirtless in a field.

The historical references were worse. Either folklore—wolves eating children, cursed pelts, silver bullets—or allegory. “Beast within the man.” “Temptation.” “Godless hunger.”

No facts. No real cases. No science. Nothing useful.

She closed the laptop harder than strictly necessary.

Then laid back and stared at the ceiling.

“Brilliant,” she muttered. “I’m a myth.”

Three days and two changes later, Jonah showed up with a rucksack full of tea bags and judgment.

“Are you serious with this?” he’d asked, stepping over the collapsed fence like it offended him personally.

Lara had looked up from cleaning the stove. “How did you find me?”

“Your note said ‘don’t follow me.’ Which is basically a challenge.”

She glared.

He raised a bag of licorice root and a loaf of real bread like an offering to a cranky forest god. “Also, GPS tracker in your pack. You forget you let me install that after the Egypt incident?”

She had, actually.

He walked in, set his stuff down, and never left.

They didn’t talk about Yamatai. Not much. Not right away.

Lara didn’t mention the bite.

Jonah didn’t mention the way she sometimes flinched at firelight or stared too long at the moon.

They cooked. Fixed up the roof. Took turns pretending they weren’t both waiting for something to crack open again.

And for a day, it worked.

Until Lara decided to see what else she could do.

Until the howling started.

Jonah wasn’t spying. He was checking.

Which was different.

The problem was, Lara had been weird lately. Not just her usual brand of post-trauma bottling or death-defying avoidance tactics. This was weirder.

Gone at odd hours. Avoiding meat. Always watching the moon.

She’d say something like “Just clearing my head”, then come back an hour later smelling like pine sap, half-covered in scratches, looking like she either fought a bear or was one.

So yeah. He checked.

He hadn’t expected to find footprints. Big ones. Wolf-sized. Leading toward the river. Then halfway back. Then stopping. Just stopping.

After that—bare feet. Human. Same size and stride Lara would have barefoot.

He stared at the ground for a long minute, then took off his cap and scratched his scalp like it might help rearrange the facts into something sane.

“Okay,” he muttered. “So she’s... raising a wolf. Secretly. That’s what this is. Secret pet. Weird, but not the weirdest thing she’s done.”

Totally normal. Completely rational. Absolutely shattered the moment he saw her. Or almost saw her.

From some distance—edge of the trees—he caught a glimpse.

Back turned, half-clothed, shoulders hunched. Her body flickered like a mirage, muscles rippling weird under skin that moved like it didn’t quite fit.

Then fur. For a split second. Actual fur.

He blinked. When his vision cleared, the wolf was standing where she’d been.

It looked at him. Straight on. Like it was waiting to see if he’d run.

He didn’t. He just slowly raised both hands. “...Lara?”

The wolf cringed, ears twitching.

She hadn’t meant to enjoy it. That was the dangerous part.

But as a wolf, the world was massive. Alive. She could feel rabbits under the grass from ten feet away. Smell rain before it came. Every step was power and precision.

And the running—

God, the running.

She tore across the ridge like she had the whole world under her paws. Nothing chasing her. Nothing dying. No blood. Just speed. Freedom.

It was early morning, the mist still clinging to the fields. Jonah should have still been asleep and no one else should have been around. Quiet except for birds and wind. And Lara, who—at this point—had mastered the shift with only moderate swearing and about twenty seconds of soul-ripping agony.

It wasn’t fun. But the part after usually was.

And then she heard it. Something between a scream and yelp, highpitched and unexpectedly close. Bitten off at the end.

“...Lara?”

She flinched, ears forward. Caught.

Standing about 50 metres away, blinking in stunned silence, was Jonah.

He was holding a thermos. Still steaming. Dressed like he was about to go on a casual nature walk.

The world paused. She stared at him. He stared at her. Then he blinked. “...Holy shit.”

She didn’t think, just reacted. In the span of about one heartbeat and a very loud internal scream, she transformed back.

Very naked. And very in front of him. She... possibly didn't think this through.

“Oh hell,” she muttered, crouching fast and trying to use her own arms as a makeshift dignity shield. “Jonah—don’t—look away!”

He did.

Instantly.

Spun around so fast he nearly dropped the thermos. “I’m not looking! Not looking! Hands up, eyes closed, swear to God, Lara!”

A beat.

Then a horrified snort from Lara. “This is so much worse than the wolf thing.”

Another beat.

“…I mean, objectively, I’d argue that depends—”

“Jonah!”

“Okay! Not helping! I’ll just—leave this here. Thermos. My jacket. Enjoy. Going back to the cabin. Not traumatized at all.”

She heard him shuffle away. Then stop.

“…You were the howling I heard last night, weren’t you?”

“No comment!”

She waited until he was gone.

Then sat back on the cold ground with the jacket, steaming coffee in one hand, face in the other. God help her. She was going to have to talk about this. Eventually.

Maybe.

Probably never.

Okay.

Okay.

So Lara is a werewolf.

And naked.

But also a werewolf.

And also his friend.

And also naked.

The thermos in his hand had been warm, but it might as well have been a cinderblock for how useless his limbs felt. He’d just handed it to her. Like that somehow balanced the universe.

Here, have some coffee. Sorry I walked in on your entire supernatural body horror transformation.

He blew out a long breath through his nose and walked faster. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he needed to go. Somewhere. Anywhere not directly next to a naked werewolf-person who was definitely going to pretend none of this ever happened.

Which—fair.

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“She was the howling last night.”

That had been his first clue. Not that it meant anything at the time. People hear howling all the time, right? In the woods. At the moon. It’s fine.

Totally fine.

The real problem was his brain kept trying to be helpful. It kept replaying the moment of her transformation in high definition, like some kind of horrible internal nature documentary.

Observe: the Common British Archaeologist in her natural habitat. Watch as she exchanges the fur for trauma.

He took a sharp right up a slope and tried to think logically.

He had seen magic before. Sort of. Ancient curses. Undead samurai. Ghost storms. At this point, the line between myth and Tuesday was blurred beyond recognition.

But this—this was Lara. His friend. His sister-in-arms. The girl who once stitched up her own leg while yelling at him to hand her the antiseptic faster. And now she was— a wolf.

Like, full-on, no-question, tail-and-everything wolf.

Also somehow weirdly regal-looking. Did that part bother him more?

Why did it bother him more?

“Goddammit.”

There was no rulebook for this. No manual for what to do when your closest friend turns into a majestic predator and then reappears looking like she just lost a wrestling match with modesty and dignity.

She had crouched. He had turned around. They had screamed in opposite emotional registers.

It had been so much.

And now he had to figure out what to say next time he saw her.

“‘Hey, Lara, nice paws’?”

No.

“‘So, your time of the month. Rough on you, huh?’”

Absolutely not.

He stopped walking. Looked up at the clouds. Considered asking the sky for guidance.

The sky, predictably, said nothing.

“Okay,” he muttered. “New plan.”

He turned and started back toward the cabin.

“She brings it up, I’ll talk. She doesn’t, I won’t. No jokes. No moon references. Just tea and support and deep internal screaming.”

Pause.

“...And maybe a gift card for a butcher.”

Jonah sat cross-legged on the floor, fiddling with a bent tent pole. Lara was curled sideways in the armchair, mug of tea balanced on her knee, staring into the fire like it might blink first.

Jonah cleared his throat. Loudly. Then again, for emphasis.

Lara didn’t look up.

“Are we gonna talk about the fact that you turned into a wolf in front of me,” he said casually, “or are we just doing this whole silent cryptid roommate thing forever?”

A beat.

Then she exhaled through her nose. “You screamed.”

“I yelled,” he corrected. “There’s a difference. It was very masculine.”

“You screamed like a Victorian governess seeing ankles.”

Jonah pointed at her. “That’s deflection.”

Lara sipped her tea, eyes still on the fire. “Yes.”

He waited.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to say anything else, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You alright?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Another silence. Comfortable, in its weird way.

Then Lara finally spoke, soft, like she was still testing the words for weight. “I was bitten. On Yamatai. Something that wasn’t… human. Not anymore. I think Himiko kept it like a guard dog, like the Stormguard. It—he—bit me. Died after.”

Jonah just nodded once. Quiet. Accepting.

“I didn’t know what was happening,” she added, voice tightening. “I only shifted fully after we got back. It’s not… like the stories. It’s not all rage and blood. But it’s not painless either. And it’s not safe.”

He didn’t interrupt.

“I tried researching. But the internet is a swamp, and everything in actual books just loops back to legends or Hollywood nonsense. Half of it thinks I should be dead. The other half wants to sell me crystals.”

Jonah hummed, low in his chest. “Do you eat people?”

Lara’s head snapped around, incredulous.

“I don’t,” she snapped.

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, raising both hands. “Just checking. You know. For future shopping trips.”

Her glare was murderous.

He grinned.

Then his expression softened. “So… what now?”

“I keep breathing,” she said after a beat. “I learn what I can. I don’t die. That’s the plan.”

It wasn’t a plan, not really. But it was the most Lara Croft thing she could’ve said, and Jonah didn’t push.

Instead, he stood, stretched his back until it cracked, and walked over to the fire to poke at it with a stick.

“Well. You ever need backup on a full moon,” he said lightly, “I’ve got a silver-plated spork and a high tolerance for weird crap.”

Lara looked down into her mug, smirking just a little. “Thank you.”

He nodded, turning toward the tiny kitchen.

“Also,” he added over his shoulder, “next time you decide to go frolicking in the woods as a majestic murder dog? Maybe wear a collar with your name on it. Just to spare me the heart attack.”

She threw a cushion at him.

He laughed.

Lara did, in the end, get a collar. Matte black leather, small silver tag. Just her first name on one side, Jonah’s number on the other. “In case I forget my phone,” she’d said, deadpan, as if the wolf part of her might one day need to make a call.

She shredded the first two trying to guess how tight it had to be to survive the shift without choking her. By the third attempt, she had it down.

She wore it only in Britain. Just in case.

She absolutely refused to be tagged. “I am not livestock,” she said, with the tone of someone who’d already seen the microchip needle and contemplated burning a building down.

Lara still had nightmares.

Yamatai. Fire. Screams. Roth’s body going still under her hands. The feeling of her bones shifting under her skin, uninvited, the first time. Her father’s study. The gun.

Sometimes they blurred together. She’d wake up in a cold sweat, blood in her mouth and a scream half-formed in her throat.

So she went to a psychologist.

A perfectly nice one. Experienced in trauma and grief. Offered grounding exercises and breathing techniques.

Didn’t have a single clue what to do with the part where she occasionally had paws - not that she told him.

Sleeping in wolf form helped. Dreams didn’t reach her as much like that. And even when they did, they didn’t sting. She remembered them more distantly. Like they belonged to someone else. A younger, more fragile version of herself.

She started shifting before bed. Most nights. Curled up near the radiator, fur warm against wood. Sometimes, she even woke up rested. A miracle.

With the shifting came the hunger.

That was new. Not psychological. Not metaphorical. Just a gnawing, bottomless need for calories that kicked in after every transformation. Especially when she ran long, or fought.

Jonah once caught her eating four chocolate bars in a row while crouched in front of the fridge in a hoodie.

“You sure you’re not turning into a bear?” he’d asked, dead serious.

She’d lobbed a half-frozen sausage at his head.

Then came the journals.

Her father’s old notes, buried beneath letters and maps she had long stopped looking through. She wasn’t even sure what pulled her back to them. A phrase she half-remembered. A date that felt wrong. She couldn’t explain it.

Kitezh. The Prophet.

She remembered reading about it years ago and brushing it off. Another myth. Another obsession.

But now, she could see it differently. The stories about the Prophet didn’t just speak of miracles — they spoke of shape, of shadows, of a man who was never quite what he seemed. Immortal, yes. But also... other. And there was more. A whole people who were considered strange by the others. Animalistic.

They went to Syria, like in her fathers files. Syria led to a tomb.

Lara liked tombs. She knew tombs and enjoyed a few deathtraps and puzzles way more than, for example, mythical creatures.

The tomb led to the map. The map led to Siberia.

And through it all, she kept transforming. Easily now. Smoothly. Sometimes just for a moment. Sometimes for hours.

The full moon didn’t bother her much anymore — more of a mood enhancer than a curse. Jonah called it her “spa night.”

But the hunger never left.

She could eat her body weight in stew after a shift and still feel vaguely annoyed that she couldn’t chew on the table leg.

And then there was the anger, something feral staying in her eyes even in her human form. Getting out when she was hungry or someone was being too much of an ass.

Jonah, of course, noticed.

“You keep this up, I’m gonna have to start carrying emergency snacks. You’re gonna bite me one day and not even mean to.”

Lara, through a mouthful of granola bar: “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Chapter Text

Siberian wilderness, late afternoon.

Wind was picking up. Tree branches were laced in almost permanent frost, low clouds promising snow.

The guides stopped just short of the ridgeline. The lead one—a broad, silent man with a scar over his lip—glanced at the treeline ahead, then back at Lara and Jonah. He didn’t speak much English, but the message was clear enough in any language: no further.

Lara tried, in calm Russian, to negotiate. Just a little further. Just to the next pass.

They shook their heads.

Then one of them muttered a word. Too softly for Jonah to catch, but Lara’s face changed. Just a fraction.

“Wolf-lands,” she translated.

Jonah sighed, rubbing his gloved hands together. “Right. Of course.”

Ten minutes later, they were standing alone by the tree line, their packs heavy by their legs. The guides were already disappearing back into the forest behind them. Jonah looked up toward the path. The sky had gone flat and grey, like someone had scraped the colour out of it with a knife.

“You’re thinking about going on anyway,” he said.

Lara nodded. Her breath puffed white. “I’m close. I can feel it.”

“I am going with you.”

“It’s going to be dangerous.” Her voice was quiet but certain. “I would rather go alone. I’ll be faster like that. Quieter.”

Jonah turned to face her fully, frowning. “Lara. Werewolf or not, I am not leaving you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. Then, after a second, softened: “I have the backpack.”

That earned a snort. “That ridiculous thing?” he asked, glancing at the custom rig slung over her shoulder. Lightweight. Modular. Folded close to her spine with magnetic clips. Designed by Lara for her to be able to wear it in her wolf form and stitched by a survival gear specialist who didn’t ask too many questions.

“It works,” she said simply.

“What if you run into people? Or worse, not-people?”

She gave him a tired, crooked smile. “Then I growl.”

“Not funny.”

Jonah hesitated a little more, arms folded. Then gently, he requested: “Lara.”

She gave him a flat look.

He grinned. He knew that she was giving in.

For a while, they were able to walk next to each other. Then, one behind the other. Then, the mountain got icy and steep and they had to start climbing. Honestly, the ice and snow giving in under their hands and feet was, at that point, kind of expected. 

Lara’s luck held and though bruised, she managed to catch herself on the small, rocky, not-iced-over part of the cliff just a few metres under the point she started to fall from in the first place. Jonah wasn’t so lucky and slid out of sight.

Once she got to relative safety, she frantically tried to call him on the radio. Her shoulders fell and breath was practically pushed out of her mouth when he responded. He was unhurt and promised to follow her as soon as he found a more… secure way.

Lara sat down heavily, checking for any wounds that the adrenaline might have her overlook. There really was nothing more than bruises. That done, she looked around herself curiously. 

While trying to slow her fall, she somehow slid around a… split in the mountain to a small valley nestled between the high peaks. There was a… was that a squirrel? There was a squirrel looking at her from some bush a few steps away, seemingly fearless, which pointed to this place being pretty safe. 

Slowly getting up, she looked through her things. She still had her radio, obviously. Her backpack worked perfectly and stayed on her back through all that mad rolling and sliding around, however things that used to be bound to it on the outside, like her tent and sleeping roll, were gone. She had some dried meat and vegetable chips, water in a thermos (so it would not get turned into ice), a few ration bars, a flashlight, matches, a knife and that was pretty much it. 

Oh! She still had her emergency chocolate! She and Jonah used to joke about that chocolate all that time. He had slipped it into her bag in an unguarded moment and then used his knowledge of it being there to tease her. Her currently superior sense of smell told her immediately how the chocolate got there, but she went with the joke and stringently denied knowing anything about it and pretended to not see it even when it was right in front of her. Even now, Lara couldn’t help smiling when she saw the chocolate.

Then she noticed something a little more dire. Her bow was also gone, as was her pistol. Shit.

For a moment she thought, then she made a decision.

Without further ceremony, she stepped behind a tree, took off her clothes, packed them into her bag, took a steadying breath, and let the shift happen.

It came quick now. Two, maybe three seconds. Bones flexed. Skin rippled. Fur unfolded along her spine like a wave. She dropped to all fours in a fluid movement that was still unnatural to watch.

Her grey coat bristled against the wind. Pale underbelly brushing the snow. Backpack still tightly secured behind her shoulders, straps flexing to accommodate her new shape.

Then she turned, and ran into the forest, silent and sure, vanishing between the trees like a shadow with teeth.

The wind was light but steady, brushing along the slopes in long, sighing waves. Clouds hung low across the sky in smudges of pewter and ash, dimming the light until everything looked muted, drained. No storm yet—just the chill certainty that one might come.

Lara ran.

Paws pressing into soft, half-settled snow. Her breath came in short bursts, fogging the air in rhythmic huffs. 

She didn’t plan to change back. Not unless she had to. She didn’t want to feel her skin, or the way her lungs ached faintly with cold when she breathed too deep. She didn’t want to feel her thoughts. As a wolf, the cold sat differently in her bones—not ignored, exactly, but not suffered. She could exist in it, move through it without pause. As a woman, she’d be shivering in under five minutes. Vulnerable.

And she’d had enough of that.

Still, she kinda regretted the absence of her bow. Even if it was useless to her wolf paws.

The snow wasn’t deep enough to stop her, but it stole speed. Every step sank just enough to drag. Every rise of the land seemed steeper in this form, especially with weight on her back. Her legs burned by midday, and she didn’t slow. Didn’t want to stop.

She crossed ridgelines, shallow creeks, and frozen game trails. Passed under the hanging limbs of spruce and pine. No sign of human habitation. Just snow and stone and silence. It was freeing and calming. Her wolf form usually made the world feel that way, but here, here it was more so. Finally she could feel only her body, her head clear and not disturbing the rest of her.

It wasn’t until the light began to bleed out of the day—smearing dusk across the snowfields—that she finally allowed herself to veer off the imagined trail and look for cover.

She found it in a narrow recess beneath an outcrop, half-concealed by a low drift. Not much more than a hollow, really, but there was enough space to curl up without wind howling directly onto her back. She shook the snow from her fur, unfastened her pack with practiced motions of paw and teeth, and pulled a strip of dried venison free. Ate it without ceremony. Then another.

For water, she simply scraped clean snow with her teeth and let it melt in her mouth.

Still in her wolf form, she nosed the pack closed again and curled into herself, tail over her nose. She didn’t want to change. The cold would be brutal on skin. And honestly, she didn’t want hands tonight. Didn’t want fingers that might start to tremble when her mind turned inward.

She let her ears flick once at the sound of shifting branches above—and then, slowly, let her breathing deepen, lulled by the steady rhythm of snowfall.

She didn’t know she was being watched.

Chapter Text

Jacob had caught the scent just before twilight. Wolf, but… not. Something in the note of it tilted wrong. 

It drifted across the trail he’d been using for years, layered with pine, leather, and something… off. Unfamiliar. A female, by the sharp, tangy trace of hormones in the fur. And not wild. Wild wolves smelled of earth, blood, and old instinct. This one smelled of canvas, metal, and something strangely clean. Deliberate.

He abandoned his own hunt without hesitation.

By full dark he’d tracked her nearly five kilometers. Not challenging—she wasn’t masking her trail, not properly. Her paws placed carefully, yes, but not with the intuition of one raised on snow. She was learning. And learning wolves left patterns.

He found her curled beneath a snow-sheltered stone lip. Breathing slow. Asleep, but not fully relaxed. Not careless.

He did not approach, kept his distance.

Instead, he settled himself in the shadows downwind, silent and still, and watched.

She was strong. Healthy. Not starving. Her coat thick against the cold, fur silvering along her spine. A wolf, but sharpened. Intentional. 

More concerningly—she bore no scent of a pack. Lone wolves were unpredictable at best. Dangerous at worst.

So he did not approach. He watched.

Her fur was thick—tinged with wet snow. Strong legs. Compact frame. Healthy. The pack beside her back was compact, well-made. Not standard issue. A sign of planning. And more than anything—proof she wasn’t a natural wolf. She wore gear. 

She had tools.

That made her dangerous.

Not feral. Not a beast to chase off.

Something else.

Jacob remained motionless for hours, silent, his breath barely misting the air. Not because he was afraid—he hadn’t feared anything in a long time—but because he needed to know. To understand what had just walked into his territory.

Was she alone? Was she here on purpose? He didn’t have answers. Not yet. But as the moon slid through the clouds and cast faint light on her curled shape, one thing became clear:

She wasn’t running randomly. She was coming here. And Jacob would find out why.

If she was here on purpose, she needed to be measured. If she wasn’t—she needed to be turned away.

What he couldn’t tell, not yet, was whether she was drawn to this valley… or driven.

That night he didn’t get much sleep, but he didn’t mind. He was not going to allow danger to come to his people. 

In the morning, just as the sun had risen, she woke up. She didn't lose much time on anything, only drinking a little and moving on. She didn't even bother hiding the place she slept in - either careless or a declaration.

Jacob followed.

She was more alert today. Less linear in her path. She sniffed the air often, tested wind direction, doubled back once or twice as though sensing something near the edge of perception. At one point she paused so abruptly Jacob nearly stepped on a half-buried branch and snapped it.

He froze, weight balanced lightly.

She lifted her head, ears pointed like arrows toward him. Nose twitching. The wind shifted.

For a heartbeat he saw the moment she almost found him—just almost. A muscle along her shoulders stiffened.

Then a gust carried her own scent back over her trail and she lost the thread.

Jacob exhaled slowly through his nose. He hated sloppy footing. Especially in himself. He circled wider, giving her more distance.

By evening, she’d found another sheltered hollow—higher this time, tucked between two crooked birches and a tangle of half-buried stones. She ate sparingly, curled tightly, and slept again. Before she closed her eyes, she paused at the edge of the clearing, nose lifted, staring directly—impossibly—toward where he stood cloaked by branches.

Not seeing him. Not scenting him. But knowing.

A test.

He didn’t move.

She didn’t growl or bolt—just stood there, tail lowered but not submissive, head slightly tilted as though trying to solve a riddle with no words attached.

Interesting.

He blinked once, slow, deliberate, and stepped back into the shadows.

If she wanted to find him, she’d have to try harder.

The next hours were uneventful. Boring, even—if Jacob had been the sort of man to get bored.

He left only for a short while, returning not hungry anymore and even a little rested. And then he waited.

The sun was barely up when she moved again. No breakfast this time either. 

They had been walking for hours when the rhythm changed. Her scent doubled back downslope, then angled toward a narrow, ice-slick ridge Jacob knew by memory alone. She tested the snow before stepping onto it—good. Smart. Not suicidal.

But her paws were too heavy on the crust.

He winced before the ice gave way.

She slid several meters, claws scraping desperately before catching hold of a protruding rock. She pulled herself up with impressive strength, panting clouds into the air.

Not helpless then.

And definitely not a mountain wolf.

He followed the long way, remaining out of sight.

He didn't return to the village that night. Or the one after.

By the third dawn, Sofia had grown concerned enough to send Rada—the best tracker in their valley and, Jacob suspected, the only one stubborn enough to argue with him to his face.

She found him high above the canyon path, perched on a frost-slick branch, wolf-shaped, watching the moving figure far below.

Rada didn’t speak. Neither did he.

She leaned against a tree, folding her arms, breath puffing warm in the cold air. Her braids were tied back with woven red cloth—a sign of mourning, but she hadn’t spoken of the one she was mourning for a long time. Old grief.

Jacob finally shifted back to human form in a low spill of snow and steam, goosebumps raising on his bare skin.

“There’s a stranger,” he said. His voice scraped from disuse.

Rada raised a brow. “Two-legged or four?”

“Both.”

A pause.

“Dangerous?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He looked back toward the trail where a wolf shape moved steadily, almost stubbornly.

“She’s not like the others,” he added.

Rada considered that. “Lost?”

“No.”

“Running?”

“No.”

“Seeking?”

Jacob didn’t answer. He simply didn't know. Or maybe he refused to know.

Rada exhaled slowly, the faintest hint of sympathy in her tone. “Sofia wants you back. The hunters do, too. And the children. They ask.”

A small muscle in Jacob’s jaw flickered.

He nodded once. “Tell them to stay clear of the stranger. No one touches her. No one approaches.”

“And if she is a threat?”

Jacob’s eyes darkened, gold flickering in the depths.

“I’ll deal with her.”

Rada didn’t push further. She simply touched the red cloth at her braids—an old gesture of respect among their people—and disappeared into the trees, leaving him alone with the wind and the impossible, stubborn trail of the strange wolf who smelled both familiar and wrong.

Jacob watched the wolf crest another ridge with the determination of someone who had no intention of turning back.

He sighed, slow and tired.

Then followed her again. Because he needed answers. And because, for the first time in years, something had entered his valley that made him wonder—not fear.

Wonder.

Chapter Text

Lara huffed into the receiver, fingers stiff as she crouched behind a windbreak of fir branches she’d assembled with the architectural genius of someone who desperately wanted to not freeze to death. Her fire crackled low beside her—more smoke than flame—but she was counting it as a win. She’d spent ten minutes lighting it. Ten. Her pride had taken critical damage.

The signal icon blinked once. Twice. Then—

“Jonah,” she said as soon as the call connected, relief loosening her shoulders. “It’s Lara. How are you?”

Static. Then a familiar, blessed voice:

“Lara! Good to hear you—finally. I’m alright. Found a small shelter a bit below where I fell. No injuries, just frost in places frost should not be. I’ve been scouting for a route around the iceberg. No luck yet, but I’ve got food and firewood.”

At least someone was having a normal expedition.

“What about you?” Jonah asked. “You warm? Safe?”

“Fine,” she said. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“You sure?”

“No frostbite, no broken bones. I’ll check in next week.”

“Lara—”

“I’m warm enough,” she lied, teeth nearly clicking from the cold.

Jonah sighed the sigh of a man about to hike through a snowstorm wearing spite and determination.

“If I don’t hear from you—”

“I know,” she said. “You’ll come charging up like a mountain moose.”

“Damn right.”

The radio cut out with a rude sputter and died.

“Great,” she muttered to the frozen air. “Abandoned by modern technology. Again.”

She folded her clothes into her pack, took a breath that might’ve frozen mid-inhale, and shifted.

The pain was brief now—sharp, familiar, bearable. Fur rippled along her spine. Her wolf senses snapped into place like someone had turned the world’s saturation levels up and the volume down to silence.

The cold eased. The hunger didn’t.

Her stomach growled with the subtlety of a chainsaw. She was running low on dried meat. Very low. Which meant hunting. Again.

She’d seen rabbits yesterday, bounding across the snow just out of reach. Sleek grey hares with twitching ears and fast, fast legs. She didn't consider for long— in her wolf form, they smelled especially tasty.

Yesterday, her first attempt at hunting in wolf form had ended in a mouthful of snow and a bruised shoulder. Today, it was going to go better.

Today wasn’t better.

She stalked. She crept. She pounced. The rabbit vanished like it could teleport. Lara skidded into a shrub, nose-first, dignity-first into the snow.

For the next one, she waited in absolute stillness. The rabbit poked its head out. She pounced. The rabbit left behind a puff of snow and what she swore was a judgmental look. Lara growled. The forest did not care.

The third ran uphill—uphill—and she lost balance on the crusted snow, face-planting so hard she inhaled half a glacier.

She was returning to her camp with chunks of ice on her nose and murder in her soul.

But she wasn’t incompetent. Not completely.

So she kept tracking. Quiet. Patient. Professional.

And—finally—caught a break.

No rabbits, but a fox had left tracks across a frozen creek, then doubled back to cover its trail. A good trick, but she’d done that in human boots since she was twelve.

She smirked and followed the trail, finding a hidden cache full of berries. Its owner smelled like a squirrel, but the smell was older. Together with the smell of the fox, well... she didn't feel any guilt for looting all the berries she could find. The original owner probably won't need them anymore.

Small win. But it felt good.

The confidence tasted better than food.

As she padded back toward camp, something prickled at the edge of her senses.

Not danger.

Not exactly.

Something deliberate.

Faint, resinous scent drifting from a nearby tree—pine sap mixed with ash and winter herbs. Not natural dispersal. Not wind patterns.

Lara followed it.

Half-hidden in the crook of a low bough rested a small birch charm. Hand-carved. Smoothed. Etched with parallel claw-like grooves. Brushed with something that had frozen dark into the wood.

A symbol. A marker.

A message.

Wolves didn’t make things like this.

Humans did.

But the scent was wolf. Controlled. Structured. A cultural hybrid—instinct layered with intention.

“Lovely,” she muttered. “Forest décor. Exactly what I needed.”

She put the charm back exactly where it had been. She wasn’t about to trigger an interspecies diplomatic incident.

Unease curled steady and low in her gut.

Someone was marking territory.

Someone who wasn’t wild.

Someone who had been here long before she arrived.

And whoever he was… he was still nearby.

Watching.

She could feel it. That constant prickle between her shoulder blades. Whoever he was—whatever he was—he was always just far enough away that she couldn’t scent him. Just quiet enough that she couldn’t hear him. Every time she felt like she almost caught a whiff of him—gone.

It grated on her.

Worse than being watched was being watched while failing at something that should be instinctive for her. That she could do easily, if only she had her bow.

Her temporary camp was little more than a fire pit, a few pine boughs for sleeping, and a snow-reinforced lean-to made with a salvaged tarp from her pack. Her paws were sore from endless silent stalking and she only had a handful of berries for the effort. Lara returned to camp in the mood of a woman seriously considering vegetarianism out of spite.

She curled tightly on the branches that night, too cold to sleep in her human form. Hungry, annoyed, and deeply ready to chew on a boot if it came to that.

She woke that morning with ice crusting her fur and her stomach folding in on itself. Her limbs were stiff from another night curled up in her wolf form, and her mood was... sharp-edged. Argumentative, even, though there was no one around to argue with. 

She changed back to human, tugged on her thermal layers and worn cargo pants, and lit the fire with aching fingers. Just as she sat down beside it to warm her hands, there was a rustle. 

She was on her feet instantly, knife in hand.

A man emerged from between the trees. He looked like he’d stepped out of some rugged outdoors catalogue. Tall. Broad. He was wearing a coat that had clearly fought several winters and won. Streaks of silver through his beard. Brown eyes, too sharp to match his disarming half-smile. His voice had that local roughness to it, but his expression was too smooth, too deliberate. 

He raised his hands, palms open. “Easy,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Lara narrowed her eyes.

“Locals don’t usually get this far up,” she said.

He gave her a slow once-over. “You don’t look local either,” he countered easily, eyeing her camp with the curiosity of a man who catalogued everything.

Before she could decide whether to threaten him or tell him to get lost, he crouched—uninvited—and unwrapped a cloth bundle. The smell hit her like divine intervention.

Cheese. Dried fish. Hard black bread.

Her stomach made a noise that might have actually been a death threat.

“Trade,” he said, placing the food between them. “Let me warm up here. You take some breakfast.”

Her stomach answered for her. Loudly. He smirked. “Name?” he asked mildly.

She sat, still wary. Knife in hand, but less tightly gripped. “I am Lara.”

He took a bite of bread before answering. “Mikhail,” he said around a mouthful. The name came a little too slow. She filed that away.

“You live nearby?” she asked.

“More or less.”

“That’s not a straightforward answer.”

He shrugged. “Neither was straightforward your question.”

Lara blinked at him. “You’re very good at avoiding answers.”

“I prefer efficient.” He offered her the fish. She watched him eat a piece of it first, just in case he was the sort of psycho who poisoned his own lunch for plausible deniability.

Only then did she take the food, trying not to look desperate. It was still a little warm, salty, delicious. Infuriating.

“You’re trying to go east?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Something up there doesn’t like visitors.”

She raised a brow. “You?”

He chuckled. “Maybe.”

“What if I keep going?”

His expression shifted—fractionally. “Then you’ll starve before you get there. You don't seem to have much food.”

Her pride flared like a struck match.

“I can hunt.”

His look said more than he could out loud.

“I don't think you are going to have much luck,” he said. “You move loudly.”

“I do not move loudly.”

“Loudly enough.”

She glared. “You’re very good at giving advice absolutely no one asked for.”

“Some call it generosity.”

“Some call it interference.”

He stood, brushing snow from his coat.

“One last warning,” he said. “Don’t go that way.”

“I can handle myself.”

“You’re stubborn.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Suit yourself.”

And with that, he turned and walked into the snow. He left the food, though.

Lara watched him go, teeth clenched. The whole interaction felt like an argument she’d somehow lost. It made her want to bite something.

So naturally, she changed back into her wolf form, checked for his scent (gone), and headed—very pointedly—east.

Jacob, for his part, was fuming.

He transformed once he was far enough from her camp—fur erupting from skin, clothes folded into a leather pouch at his side, muscle and claw stretching as he shed the man and became the animal.

The snow was easier to bear in this shape.

So was his irritation.

Stubborn, he thought, picking up her trail once more. Stubborn and reckless and apparently impervious to reason.

He tracked her easily. She wasn’t exactly trying to be stealthy. Her scent clung to pine needles and left depressions in the snow.

He let her see him once, just briefly. A flash of golden eyes through the dark, the shape of a larger wolf silhouetted against the rise.

She tensed.

Didn’t back away.

Didn’t turn back.

He growled low, more out of annoyance than real threat, and faded back into the dark.

She wouldn’t stop.

He wouldn’t either.

She caught his scent hours later—wolf musk, frost, and something old beneath it, like weathered stone or ancient wood. Unmistakable. 

She followed the trail until she found him standing on a rock outcropping, human-shaped, cloak dusted with snow.

He turned before she approached.

“I wondered when you’d stop pretending you didn’t notice me,” he said.

His voice was deep, controlled. The same as “Mikhail”—but not pretending now.

Lara darted behind a bush, shifted, dressed quickly, and met his gaze with all the dignity of a starving archaeologist with absolutely no patience left.

“So you were watching me,” she said. “All that time.”

“You made it easy,” he replied. “Your trail was a mess.”

“That’s insulting.”

“It’s honest.”

“Still insulting.”

The wind hissed between them, carrying cold and tension alike.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said finally. “Turn back.”

“No.”

“You’re not equipped.”

“I’m managing.”

“You’re starving.”

“I said I’m managing.” Her voice was tight now.

His jaw flexed. “You’re reckless. You walk like someone who expects the mountain to forgive her mistakes.”

“And you talk like someone who thinks he owns the whole forest.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“Perhaps you’re delusional.”

His eyes flashed gold for a fraction of a second.

Lara stiffened.

So that’s what he was.

He stepped closer, slow, controlled. “And you’re not subtle,” he countered.

“Funny way of making friends.”

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“Good,” she shot back. “Because you’re terrible at it.”

They stared at each other—cold, polite, furious.

“You don’t belong here,” he said.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“You’re trespassing.”

“You’re annoying.”

That one actually made him blink. Offended.

Good.

“If you continue,” he said, voice low, “I won’t protect you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Perhaps you need it.”

A thick silence fell—cracking like ice under weight.

They turned away from each other at the same moment, both pretending it wasn’t perfectly synchronized.

The snow swallowed their footprints within minutes.