Finnick Shadowclaw had killed a lot of things in his career. Wolves. Dark mages. A training dummy that one time by accident. None of those things had reattached their own heads and laughed about it. This was new goddamn territory and the territory was bullshit.
The trees around them bent inward. Branches groaned, the wood creaking under a pressure that was invisible and deliberate, the jungle itself folding toward the clearing like fingers closing around a throat.
Black eyes opened in the dark, and every wolf in the formation arrived at the same conclusion at the same speed: we are fucked.
Pairs. Scattered through the canopy and the undergrowth, blinking into existence at staggered intervals, each pair appearing in a different position, a different height, a different angle. The opening was coordinated. Rehearsed. The specific choreography of predators who had done this before and whose before was measured in centuries.
