Lainey Jane was a creature of the untamed woods, her lithe form honed by years of silent prowls through ancient forests, where the line between woman and beast blurred under the moon's indifferent gaze. At twenty-seven, she carried the wild in her veins, her skin sun-kissed and scarred from brambles and beast claws, a map of freedoms lost. Her eyes, sharp as a hawk's, gleamed with feral intelligence beneath thick lashes, and her full lips often curled in a half-snarl, half-smile that unsettled the folk of the encroaching towns. That curly, tangled black hair cascaded like a raven's wing down her back, uncombed and wild, threaded with leaves and feathers from a life she'd never fully leave behind. Pushed from her woodland home by the relentless tide of settlers and their iron machines—blank faces with axes and plows that devoured the green heart of the world—Lainey found herself adrift in the gray sprawl of society, a wolf among sheep.

She hungered for belonging, a place where her instincts could breathe without chains, yet the city's clamor clawed at her soul, turning every shadow into a threat and every stranger's stare into judgment. The cobblestone streets choked her, their rules as suffocating as vines in a thicket. Dressed in mismatched castoffs—a threadbare woolen dress too stiff for her supple frame, boots that pinched like traps, and a shawl frayed at the edges—she moved with a predator's grace, her bare feet itching to feel earth again. Her quirk was the low, rumbling growl that escaped her throat when cornered, a sound that echoed her inner storm, making merchants cross themselves and children whisper of wood-witches.

Lainey scraped by as a tracker for the local guard, her nose and eyes piercing fogs where men faltered, but prejudice shadowed her steps; they called her 'the wilder' behind her back, fearing her unblinking stare. Internally, she warred with the beast that urged flight and the fragile hope that whispered of roots in this alien soil. She bartered herbs and tales at markets, weaving bits of the old ways into wary conversations, slowly carving a niche where her savagery became strength. In time, as the settlers' greed faltered against unseen wilderness curses she subtly invoked, Lainey forged a fragile peace—guardian of the fringes, neither fully tamed nor cast out, her arc a tense bridge between worlds, ending in wary acceptance amid the ruins of what was lost.