Chapter 24: Shadows in the Forest

LIAM

The forest had always been my refuge. A place I could retreat to when the pack life grew too heavy, and everything I'd worked to protect felt one wrong move from crumbling. 

Out here, I didn't need to think; the silence and the scent of pine and earth allowed a certain calm I couldn't find anywhere else. Tonight, though, the woods didn't hold their usual peace. There was a tension in the air, so thick I could feel it pulsing, almost like the trees themselves were on edge, watching.

I came out here because of a scream — sharp and chilling, tearing through the night air, heard by half the pack. 

Darius, one of our youngest trackers, had been tasked with scouting the borders tonight, searching for any sign of Isabelle. 

And then… nothing. Silence. And now a scream. That scream. No one should have had to hear that sound, a raw cry of pain and terror that wouldn't leave my mind.

I moved through the underbrush with a practiced stealth, senses heightened, my wolf pacing just beneath my skin, ready to surge forward at the first sign of danger. 

Under any other circumstances, I might have felt exhilarated — the pulse of a hunt always stirred something primal in me. But this? This was something else. Something darker.

My thoughts drifted, unbidden, to Maeve. I couldn't help it. Since the moment we'd met, she'd been there, lodged deep in my mind. It was more than just attraction. There was a pull between us, fierce and inescapable, as if she was meant to be mine. But now she left me, she was with Ronan.

No it can't be over, it just can't.

I shook the thought away. Maeve wasn't in danger tonight. This wasn't about her. This was about Isabelle. About Darius. About the pack.

A chill swept through the air, carrying with it a scent I recognized instantly: blood. Fresh, rich, sharp as metal. My wolf surged forward, instincts taking control as I crept along the path, following the scent. My hands clenched, my muscles tensed. It wasn't long before I found him.

Darius lay slumped against the base of an ancient oak, his throat torn open, blood pooling beneath him, soaking into the forest floor. He looked young — too young. The terror in his wide, glassy eyes was unmistakable, frozen in a final, horrible moment.

Rage bubbled up, searing and relentless, fueled by grief. This wasn't some rogue attack. The wounds on his neck and chest were jagged, torn with a cruelty that went beyond instinct or hunger. His clothes were shredded as though he'd been attacked by something wild, but this wasn't the work of any wolf. The edges of the cuts were too precise, as if some terrible force had taken pleasure in every slash, every bite.

As I crouched over his body, trying to process what I was seeing, a strange sensation prickled at the back of my neck. That's when I sensed her — more than saw her at first. A presence hovering just at the edge of my vision. When I looked up, my breath caught.

She stood a few feet away, her form somehow both present and insubstantial, as if she were woven from the shadows themselves. 

There was something ethereal about her, almost… ghostly. Her skin seemed to flicker like candlelight, her edges blurring, blending with the night around her. It felt impossible, seeing her, like she was some dark wraith risen from the ground itself, not quite real but far too vivid to ignore. 

But there were no demons here, no ghosts, no wraiths — not in our world. That was the line we all accepted. Yet the figure before me defied every rule I thought I knew.

She tilted her head, the faintest hint of a somewhat sad smile twisting her lips. Her eyes, glowing faintly with an eerie, unnatural light, settled on me, and I felt something close to fear twist in my gut.

"Lost, wolf?" Her voice was soft, like a breeze rustling through the trees, but there was a sharpness beneath it, a chill that sank deep.

I clenched my jaw, my hand moving instinctively to the blade at my side. "Who are you?"

She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug, a picture of disinterest. "Does it matter? I'm simply here… delivering a message."

I glanced down at Darius, at the blood staining the earth around him. His eyes stared, wide and empty, frozen in a last moment of terror I couldn't shake. My hand clenched around the blade at my side as I looked back up at the woman. "And this?" My voice came out rough, choked with the anger clawing its way up my throat. "Is this part of your message?"

Her expression softened, and a flicker of something like sorrow washed over her features. She didn't answer immediately. Instead, her gaze drifted to Darius's body, lingering there with a sadness that felt too deep, too ancient. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, laced with a haunting quality that sent a chill through me.

The woman's expression shifted, her gaze drifting to Darius with an unsettling calm, like she was seeing through him, past him, into something none of us could understand. Her lips curled into a faint, ghostly smile, but it was the sadness in her eyes that struck me hardest — so deep it felt like a weight pressing against the air around her.

"I felt that he would die," she murmured, her voice barely a whisper, her words more like an incantation to herself than anything meant for me. "I felt it in the air, in the tremor of his last breath. Death told me." Her words lingered, heavy and strange, like they existed just beyond my grasp, brushing up against the edges of what I knew and what I thought I understood.

Her gaze drifted back to me, and for a moment, I could swear I saw something deeply haunted in her expression. When she spoke again, her tone softened, almost reverent. "I helped him cross the border into what waits on the other side. That's what I do, wolf. It's why I'm here."

Every word she said seemed to dissolve as soon as it reached me, leaving more questions than answers. 

She sounded like a lunatic, unhinged, spinning riddles and half-truths. And yet, there was something undeniably raw in her eyes, something that made my skin crawl. She didn't look like a killer — but she didn't look like anyone sane, either.

Still, if she had been responsible for Darius's death, she'd likely do worse to me if I pushed too hard. I forced myself to be calm, to keep my voice even. "What do you know about Isabelle?"

Her lips curled faintly, a ghost of a smile flickering across her face, though it was tinged with an unsettling sorrow. "Isabelle…" She repeated the name, drawing it out like she was tasting it, savoring a secret only she understood. "You think you know her, don't you? A lost, fragile girl in need of saving." Her gaze sharpened, her eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that held me in place. "But maybe… maybe you're all looking for her for the wrong reasons."

A cold dread wound its way into my gut, undercutting the anger and filling the space with an uneasy weight. "What do you mean?" The question slipped out before I could stop it, my tone more desperate than I wanted it to be. She was speaking in circles, but she was getting under my skin, whether I wanted her to or not.

She drifted closer, her figure hazy, the edges blurring into the darkness, as if she were a part of the shadows themselves. "You don't know who Isabelle truly is, any more than you understand what she's capable of. And Jean…" Her voice dipped, the words laced with something bitter, cold as the night around us. "She may not be who you think he is either."

I swallowed hard, the muscles in my jaw tightening. Every word felt like a stone, tearing apart the image I'd built of Isabelle, her innocence, her vulnerability. 

She was supposed to be the one we had to save, the girl lost in the dark. My fists clenched, my voice strained as I forced it to stay steady. "You're lying."

"Lying?" She tilted her head, and there was something darkly final in her tone, like a whisper of truth that couldn't be undone. "I may be many things, wolf. A herald of death, a voice in the shadows, a witness to things no one else dares to see… but I do not lie." Her eyes softened, but the sorrow in them only deepened, as though something old and regretful had surfaced. "You're looking for answers, but you're asking the wrong questions. You're trusting a story that was never yours to believe."

I wanted to push her words away, to shake them off, but the edge of doubt crept in, threading through my anger like a poison. "If you know where she is," I said, voice tight, barely restrained, "then you'll tell me. Now."

She looked at me with something close to pity, her expression softening in a way that unsettled me even more. And for a split second, I thought I saw a flicker of regret, a crack in her otherwise unreadable expression. 

But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the same hollow sadness. "If you think Isabelle is a girl who needs saving, then you're more naive than I thought," she murmured, her voice trailing off as cold as it was haunted. "And if you keep searching, it will lead you to places you aren't prepared to see."

Her words felt like a warning, pressing against an invisible boundary I hadn't known was there, and as she spoke, her figure began to waver, dissolving into the shadows as if the darkness itself were reclaiming her.

"Wait—" I lurched forward, desperation roughening my voice, but it was too late. She slipped away, her form fading into the dark, her shape dissipating like smoke until there was nothing left.

The silence of the forest closed in around me, heavy and thick, but her presence lingered, like a chill pressing down on my skin. I looked down at Darius's lifeless form, anger and sorrow twisting in my gut, along with something else —a fear that felt sharp and raw, clawing up from the depths.

Her words echoed through my mind, riddles and half-truths that left deeper wounds than I cared to admit. If she was right, if her words weren't just hollow threats, then the danger wasn't something lurking at the edge of our territory. It was something festering within, something hidden that had been waiting, growing, in the dark.

But right now Darius was here, and I needed to do the only thing that left I could. 

Today I lost one of my pack brothers. 

So I howled.