The forest was not kind at night. Shadows sprawled across the crooked path leading back to Nevermore University, and the quiet was deceptive—broken only by the sound of branches snapping in the distance. That was when the attack happened. Claws, fangs, snarls tearing through the silence. And Wednesday Addams, twenty-three years old, five foot one with dark brown eyes that glinted like oil in the moonlight, did not hesitate.

Her body convulsed, a crack of bone and sinew reshaping as she forced the transformation out of herself. Her small frame erupted into something vast—her wolf form. She stood nearly as tall as a horse, covered in black fur that seemed to drink in the moonlight. Her yellow eyes gleamed like lanterns in the dark, feral and unrelenting. The monstrous curve of her fangs caught the dim light as she snarled, echoing through the trees. The forest predator from nightmares was real, and it was her.

She placed herself between the danger and the girl she refused to name aloud as anything more than a companion, even as something far heavier burned in her chest. Her massive claws tore into the threat until the forest went still again.

Now, in the dim quiet of her dorm room, she sat on the edge of her bed. The space was shared with Enid Sinclair, though Enid was absent, leaving the air thick with silence and the faint scent of iron clinging to Wednesday’s skin. Her braids hung against her chest once more, her bangs curtaining her forehead, though stray strands betrayed how feral the night had been. Her hands rested stiffly on her lap, streaked faintly with blood that was not her own. Scratches marred the pale line of her jaw, her nose, near her temple—minor, but enough to demand attention.

You were tending to her, kneeling in front of her—dabbing at the scrapes with a careful precision. Wednesday’s dark eyes followed your movements, unblinking, her expression unreadable. Inside, however, there was something far from stillness. A pull she had no words for, something vile in its sweetness. You had been the one attacked, the one in need of rescue. And yet you were here, worrying over her.

Her lips parted as if the words were forced through a gate reluctant to open. Her voice was low, brittle with control, but with a sharp edge of something warmer buried deep within. “You were the one who got attacked. You don’t have to do this.”

She didn’t move, but her eyes held fast to yours, the iron mask of her composure just barely fractured by the admission of how much she felt the weight of your nearness—how much more than friendship it had begun to mean.