Chapter One: Load Game
Bella Swan had always preferred people in pixels.
Digital friendships were neat. Predictable. You could block someone, mute drama, log out when your social battery drained. In real life? People didn't come with off switches. They didn't wait their turn to speak or follow the script. And more often than not, they disappointed you.
The headset hummed against her temples, syncing with the VR hub she'd saved up three months of tips for. The logo of LupinX Labs flashed in front of her eyes like a heartbeat, pulsing into black.
Welcome to Project Wildbound: Beta Protocol.
Please confirm player handle.
"NightFox," she murmured, her voice crisp in the mic.
Handle accepted. Loading environment…
Her bedroom—dimly lit and cluttered with used coffee mugs, flannel shirts, and half-finished notebooks—faded away. Wind rushed past her ears. Cold. Wild. Real. She could smell pine.
When Bella opened her eyes, she was standing barefoot in the middle of a dense forest. A quiver of digital arrows hung at her side. The beta was marketed as the "first instinct-based survival sim," using body cues, adrenaline response, and even pulse rate to tailor gameplay. Players reported feeling things in-game they didn't even recognize about themselves.
She loved it. The escape. The challenge. The silence.
Until something growled behind her.
Bella spun, arrow notched before she had time to think. A shadow flickered just beyond the tree line. Massive. Broad-shouldered. Not like the other players—none of them moved like that. It was graceful and grounded. He circled her without a word, staying low and out of sight, as if testing her.
Unknown ally approaching. Do you allow assistance?
The prompt blinked.
She narrowed her eyes. "Yes."
The shadow stepped forward. His character model was taller than the rest—bare arms, tan skin, black hair tied back, no armor. Just dark, sharp eyes and a steady presence.
No name hovered above him.
Bella swallowed. "You a dev?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he stepped closer, reached out, and pressed his hand gently against her shoulder. A simple gesture. But heat sparked beneath her skin.
The system must've registered it because her pulse spiked.
Bond forming… Trust level: Initiated.
Bella backed up. "Whoa, what—"
He turned, silent as ever, and started walking deeper into the woods.
She hesitated.
This wasn't in the tutorial. No guide for "hot forest protector with god-tier reflexes." But her feet followed anyway.
Back in Forks, her real-life was stagnant. She worked part-time at the bookstore. Her dad kept trying to set her up with Mike Newton. Jessica Stanley still sent her passive-aggressive "miss you" texts. Nothing changed. Nothing sparked.
But here?
Here, a silent player with no name had just changed the rules.
Chapter One (Continued): The Forest Doesn't Lie
Sam POV:
The second he saw her, something ancient stirred inside him.
Not the wolf.
Not the instincts he'd been trained to temper or the rituals passed down from the Elders.
This was different.
She was in-game, sure. But there was nothing digital about the way her heartbeat reached him. Nothing artificial about the scent of her skin—faint cedar and something softer, like rain on stone. Even the faint tremble in her hand as she notched her first arrow felt real.
Sam flexed his fingers.
He hadn't meant to join the game. Jared had set it up, laughing about how "even alphas need to chill." Paul had dared him. "Come on, man. You're always brooding. Try existing for once." He'd rolled his eyes and ignored them… until a month ago, when Embry quietly handed him a VR rig and said, "If you want to stop dreaming about fire and blood, maybe this'll help."
The forest helped.
Or at least, it did—until she appeared.
Bella.
She didn't know who he was. Didn't recognize him from the shadows. But the second she said yes to the prompt, it was like a thread snapped into place between them. Not a string. A chain.
No. Not a chain, Sam corrected himself. Something more sacred. More primal. Like her spirit had been reaching for his this whole time, even from the other side of the screen.
He couldn't speak. The devs disabled voice chat in this build, and besides, words weren't something Sam was good with anymore.
But action? That, he understood.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes widened. That pulse—he felt it. Not through some tech, but like it echoed inside him. A beat-for-beat twin of his own.
He didn't need the game to tell him a bond was forming.
He already knew.
Sam turned and walked away, expecting her to freeze, to call out or run. Instead, her steps followed his, crunching leaves and soft breath just behind him. Hesitant. Curious. Brave.
She trusts you.
The wolf stirred again, satisfied.
He led her through the trees, to the first shelter point—a hidden glen with a thermal spring and a platform they could defend. As she explored the edges of the water, eyes still wide in wonder, Sam crouched low beneath the cover of a birch tree.
He didn't understand why this girl—why the code clung to her differently. Why he could smell her, feel her in his bones, like she was already his.
But then again, maybe he did.
Imprinting wasn't logical. It was fate. It was the universe answering a question he hadn't dared ask.
And fate, apparently, could glitch its way through fiber optic lines just fine.
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