it’s cold tonight. nothing can warm her lunar chill, but there is something sinister which reaches into her bones and refuses to loosen. allison looks at him and would feel it if not for the impending gloom. she keeps her attention on whatever isaac’s eyes miss and though this is few, she still glimpses the retreat of shadows the closer they get to the break in the tree line. past that view, the swell of water and its sloshing, a clear sign that the lake’s been disturbed. she can sense that something is wrong before they break through the shroud of the forest.
❝ hm, ❞ comes her initial response. when he crouches, she scans the dark of the water. something stirs beneath them, but she is fixated elsewhere. ❝ it’s low tide. ❞ unrelated, but worth mentioning all the same. as if to elaborate, she gestures to the moon and continues, ❝ it should be high. and this beach shouldn’t even be here. ❞ definitely worse than the nemeton.
he doesn’t challenge her, but she imagines he is anyway. allison’s already kicking out of her shoes, pulling her coat from her shoulders, and working her sweater over her head. ❝ we really don’t have a choice. ❞ she stills her chattering teeth with a gritted jaw; her skin is gooseflesh before it is exposed to the night. without her own jeans, she’s stepping into the water. ❝ do you smell that? ❞
it says a lot about their oscillating relationship, that the sight of her bare skin no longer sends his nerves skittering like a frightened colt. there’s familiarity in the divot of her spine, a place he’s held countless times both in pleasure and purpose. there is a dreamlike pallor to her skin now as she fearlessly wades into the shallows, and he knows she feels it, the temperature dropping as sharp as the sun on the horizon. he spares a thought for his own discarded clothing quickly joining the pile. isaac hates the cold.
‘ rotten. ’ beyond the usual lakeside cocktail that assaults his sharpened sense of smell, there is something dead about the air, something otherworldly. the wolf stirs beneath his skin in restlessness. he can feel it pacing endlessly as he traps it within his mind. ‘ — and wrong. really wrong. ’
despite his senses screaming in protest, isaac approaches the lake by her side. red eyes flicker, hoping to see what his human eyes cannot. to his regret, the murky lake water seems to conceal whatever is hidden in its depths well.
‘ this is going to suck. we’re going to spend the next hour in your car with the heat up. ’ he shakes his head, the last show of protest before he dips his shoulders beneath the surface. ‘ see you down there. ’
