🌟THE CALL🌟

CHAPTER SIX

🩷Talia🩷

The buzz of her phone broke the silence just as Talia slid the key into her apartment door. She hesitated, glancing down at the screen.

Bria: Talia please. I need you. It’s bad. Come to the old station. Please.

Her pulse kicked. No greeting. No emojis. No sarcasm. Just panic, plain and raw.

Talia stared at the message. The old train station? It had been abandoned for years, nothing but graffiti and rusted tracks now. Why would Bria be there?

She tried calling — no answer.

Another message lit up her screen before she could redial.

Bria: Don’t call. Just come. I can’t explain.

A part of her screamed to ignore it. This wasn’t like Bria. But what if something was wrong?

She turned from her door and headed back down the stairs, heart pounding a little harder with every step. The wind outside had shifted, sharper now, like the air knew something she didn’t.

---

The ride to the station felt longer than it was. Talia’s grip tightened on the steering wheel every time she glanced at her phone, waiting for another message that didn’t come.

The station loomed ahead, skeletal and still, half-eaten by ivy and decay. Moonlight scattered across the cracked pavement and shattered glass. It didn’t feel abandoned—it felt watched.

Talia parked but didn’t cut the engine. She scanned the shadows.

“Bria?” she called through the open window. No answer.

She stepped out. The air was damp and smelled of rust and moss. Her boots crunched on gravel as she moved toward the arched entrance, hesitant.

“Bria!” she called again, louder this time. Her voice echoed.

A flicker of movement to her left. A silhouette darting through the broken framework.

Talia turned fast—but nothing was there.

Her skin prickled. Instinct told her to leave, but something stronger rooted her in place.

Then she heard it.

A whisper—no, a breath. Right behind her.

She spun—

—and a hand shot out of the dark and shoved her hard against the wall.

She barely had time to scream before fingers closed around her throat.

Not Bria.

A man. Human, but not normal. Eyes too wide. Smile too sharp. There was something off, like he was high on something unnatural.

“I was told not to hurt you too bad,” he rasped. “But rules are flexible, yeah?”

Talia clawed at his arm, panic flaring. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

Then—

A blur.

A growl.

And he was gone.

Thrown back, hard enough to crack brick.

Talia collapsed to her knees, gasping, eyes wide.

Ronan stood over her attacker, eyes glowing amber in the dark. He didn’t speak. Just bared his teeth.

The man scrambled up—but not to fight. To run. Fast.

Ronan let him go.

He turned to Talia.

“You shouldn’t have come alone,” he said, voice low, trembling with restrained fury.

Talia backed away. “How did you know I was here?”

But she already knew.

The message. It hadn’t been from Bria.

---

Talia couldn’t stop shaking.

The cold brick scraped against her spine as she pressed herself against the wall, her breath coming in sharp gasps. The echo of her attacker’s hands still lingered on her throat, invisible fingerprints seared into her skin.

Ronan knelt beside her, eyes scanning her face with unsettling intensity. “You’re hurt.”

“No—I’m fine,” she rasped, though her voice cracked on the lie.

He didn’t argue. He simply pulled off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders with a surprising gentleness. It smelled like cedar and something darker, grounding.

“I got a message. From Bria,” she said, gripping the edges of the coat. “She said she was here.”

“She never sent that message,” Ronan replied, voice like gravel. “It was bait. Someone wanted you out here, alone.”

“But why me?” she asked, throat tight. “Who the hell was that man?”

Ronan looked away, jaw tense. “Someone working for her.”

Talia blinked. “Who’s ‘her’?”

He hesitated.

The silence stretched.

“Ronan.”

His name came out a demand.

He sighed, finally meeting her gaze. “A witch.”

Talia stared at him, waiting for the punchline.

It never came.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “No. That’s—no. This is ridiculous. People don’t just—witches aren’t real.”

“You think that man was normal?”

Her protest caught in her throat.

No. He hadn’t been normal.

And Ronan… something about him, too. The way he moved. The way that man had run from him. Like prey.

“You need to start accepting that the world isn’t what you thought,” Ronan said quietly. “And that you’re no longer standing on the outside of it.”

Talia swallowed hard. “What does she want with me?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ronan admitted, which somehow made it worse. “But I’m going to find out.”

“And in the meantime?”

“You stay close. You don’t trust unknown messages. You don’t go anywhere alone.”

Talia looked down at her hands. They were trembling.

Everything had changed—and she didn’t even know how or why.

---

[Anonymous]

From her perch on the crumbling balcony of an abandoned house deep in the woods, she stirred the flame dancing in the center of the obsidian bowl. Smoke curled upward in lazy spirals, revealing the scene she had just witnessed.

Talia Elowen.

The girl glowed like a candle in the dark—untouched, unshaped. Still dormant. Still oblivious to what pulsed beneath her skin.

“Interesting,” the witch murmured, trailing her fingers through the smoke. “You’re waking up.”

The man had failed.

Ronan.

The Alpha always meddled. Always protected what he shouldn’t.

But he couldn’t protect her forever.

Not from fate.

Not from the blood that sang in her veins.

And not from the price already written in the bones of this world.

The witch leaned closer to the bowl, whispering something ancient. The flames snapped, flared violet, then collapsed into darkness.

It wouldn’t be long now.

Talia Elowen would see the truth.

And when she did, the game would truly begin.