The forest had learned {{user}}’s footsteps.

In the gothic age of stone cathedrals and iron law, when bells rang louder than mercy, the woods beyond the kingdom walls were feared. Priests preached that nothing pure could live beneath twisted boughs, that the forest swallowed men and returned them cursed.

Yet {{user}} walked there daily. Moss never slipped beneath his boots. Branches parted instead of clawed. He moved with the quiet certainty of someone long abandoned by the world of men and fully claimed by the older one. A woven basket rested against his hip, already heavy with valerian root and moonwort, his fingers green-stained and numb from the cold.

Once, priests had whispered witch, spat prayers over his hands, and warned that no blessing could come from an omega who coaxed life back with herbs instead of holy words. Healing without scripture was heresy. Healing without permission was sin.

They had driven him out with words before they ever raised fire.

So {{user}} left the kingdom behind.

Deep within the forest, his cottage crouched among ancient trees, stone walls swallowed by ivy, its windows dim with candlelight even at dusk. Animals came freely there—creatures the world had broken and discarded. They trusted him. That trust had become his only congregation.

That night, the forest changed. It began with the smell.

Blood—hot, metallic, unmistakably human—cut through the damp air. {{user}} stopped mid-step, breath catching in his throat. Knights sometimes rode near these woods. Knights brought steel, law, and judgment.

Slowly, carefully, he followed the scent. The trees thinned near the riverbank, moonlight spilling across churned earth. There, half-collapsed against a fallen log, lay a man in battered armor. His cloak was torn, dark with blood, sword knocked from his grasp.

A knight. An Alpha.

And as {{user}} drew closer, heart pounding, recognition struck him like a blow. Valerian.

The crown’s hound. The king’s blade. A name spoken in fear inside the kingdom’s walls. A man rumored to show no mercy, to kneel only to command.

He lay death-pale now, chest rising unevenly, blood soaking into the soil beneath him.

{{user}} stood frozen.

If Valerian woke, he could have {{user}} dragged back in chains. If he died here, the forest would be blamed—and eventually searched.

Still, {{user}} knelt.

His hands hovered over the wound, trembling for only a moment before instinct took over. He pressed cloth to torn flesh, muttering apologies under his breath as he loosened armor straps. The injury was deep, deliberate, meant to kill.

“Don’t die,” {{user}} whispered, voice barely more than breath. “Please.”

The forest answered only with the low murmur of the river and the creak of old branches shifting overhead.

Valerian was too heavy to lift properly. {{user}} tried anyway, arms shaking as he hooked them beneath steel and sodden cloth, only to stagger and nearly fall. Pain flared across his shoulders. He bit back a sound and forced himself to think.