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Shadows that burn

Author: Marlize Beneke
last update Last Updated: 2025-08-06 16:31:07

The air was heavier than usual the next morning, as if the forest itself sensed something brewing. I woke in Jaxon’s bed, the soft rustle of leaves outside the open window offering a deceptive calm. His scent clung to the sheets, grounding me. My fingers brushed the empty space beside me, still warm, and I knew he hadn’t gone far.

When I padded out into the hallway, Jaxon was standing in the kitchen, shirtless, a cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. The muscles in his back tensed before he turned, his storm-grey eyes finding mine like they were built to.

“Morning,” he said, setting down the cup. He crossed the room in three long strides and cupped my face, his thumb brushing across the faint scar at my hairline.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Just... nervous. Like something’s coming.”

His lips pressed to my forehead, slow and steady. “I feel it too.”

We didn’t talk more. We didn’t need to. Not yet. Instead, I stood there, wrapped in his arms, listening to the rhyt
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  • Beneath the Wolf Moon   Investigation

    “Documents from the study are missing,” my father said. His voice had a level, calm fury to it. “Important papers. Personal, yes, but also papers we keep for family legacy. We checked this morning and discovered items removed from the lower drawer.”Heat flared in my face. That drawer. The desk. I felt that tight, cold coil of panic. For a moment I imagined all kinds of outcomes: confrontation, confiscation, punishment. My throat dried.“We must know who entered the study,” my mother said, and her voice was brittle with an anger I’d rarely seen aimed at anything other than minor household failures. “This is a violation.”The accusation hung between us. I felt the urge to step forward and to tell the truth—to raise my hands and say that three nights ago, Jaxon and Lucas and Ethan had come and taken copies of those very papers, that everything important had been photographed, cataloged, and re-hidden—that I had been part of it. The urge was enormous and sudden and stupid and honest. But

  • Beneath the Wolf Moon   The Quiet Claim

    The late afternoon sun had the soft, weary look of a thing that had been kept busy all day and was finally ready to rest. It poured through my bedroom window in the kind of light that softened edges and made everything look almost forgiving, and for a moment I let myself pretend the world outside my door might stay gentle for a little while. My skin still ached from training, a steady soreness that reminded me I was doing the right thing, that every bruise and every pull in my muscles meant progress. I dressed slowly, taking care with each movement, and tried to breathe in the small, ordinary comforts of the house—the smell of detergent on clean sheets, the soft thud of the heating system coming on—as if normal things could anchor me.I was almost to the bottom of the stairs when the house changed tone. It happened the way thunder happens far off at first: a shift in the air, a tightening of the familiar. Footsteps moved differently in the hallway. The murmur of voices wasn't the dist

  • Beneath the Wolf Moon   What tomorrow brings

    “We don’t know yet,” Lucas replied. “But it reads like there was a plan to bring something out, to initiate a role. If they kept you ignorant, it’s because whatever you represent has power vested in it. Or dangerous enemies.”A slow, cold thought crept up my spine—dangerous enemies. I pictured faces from the pack, the politics Jaxon had murmured against, and Savanna’s hunger for position. The bedrock of my childhood, the list of banal humiliations, suddenly had depth I hadn’t known to suspect. My parents had not been distant because they were uninterested. They had been distant because they had been holding something taut, a secret woven into the fabric of our household to keep an outcome from unraveling.Without thinking, I opened the bottom drawer of the desk. It stuck at first, and then it yielded with a quiet complaint. Inside lay an old journal, its leather cracked and soft, and beneath it a small velvet box. My hands went cold. I recognized the locket on the table earlier—the sa

  • Beneath the Wolf Moon   Night paper trails

    The darkness has a way of sharpening everything. Sounds that fade into the background during the day—the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of the porch swing—turn into signals and alarms at night. Tonight, the house was filled with quiet noises, soft and steady, and I learned each one like a ship learns the seams of its hull. My heart acted as a drum, keeping me steady as I waited in the shadowy hallway for the others to arrive.Jaxon was the first to slip through the side gate. He moved into the yard as silently as if the forest had taken human form. Lucas came next, a slow silhouette, calm and efficient. Ethan arrived last—not a shadow but a sudden, sincere presence at the end of the path. He wore a look that said he was trying to be braver than he felt, which tightened my chest in a way that had nothing to do with fear.We paused at the base of the stairs, a quartet of uneven breaths in the dark. Jaxon’s hand found mine for a moment—not a lover’s touch, even if the world would have

  • Beneath the Wolf Moon   The moon

    “Which is precisely why they want Savanna in your bed and Avery out of the story,” Lucas said, closing the laptop with a decisive click. “Anchors don’t disappear because they’re weak. They disappear because they are too powerful in a way that terrifies people who crave straight lines.”The room held us in a silence that wasn’t empty. I could feel the shape of my life shifting, not collapsing but opening, a lock clicking in a door I had long assumed was painted on brick. I thought of Savanna’s eyes when she’d whispered threats in the hallway, of my mother’s mouth tightening when I entered a room, and of my father’s voice clipped and dismissive as if crisp syllables could make me smaller. All their certainty about what I could not be. All their fear about what I might.“Take it off,” I said, lifting the bracelet between my finger and thumb. My voice did not shake. “I want to know what I am without someone else’s muffle.”Jaxon stepped closer, and for a moment I thought he would argue, not

  • Beneath the Wolf Moon   The anchor under moonlight

    The morning stretched thin and pale across my bedroom wall, a shawl of light sliding over papers and photographs that had not moved since last night. I sat cross-legged on the rug with the satchel open beside me, my fingers tracing the edges of the copied pages like a pilgrim skimming the carved names of saints. The words I had read—Halcyon Accord, held in trust, custodial lineage—kept rearranging themselves in my mind, not changing meaning exactly but revealing new hinges, new trapdoors. It was almost as if the documents were not merely telling me something; they were testing how much I could bear to understand at once.A soft knock touched the window behind my curtains. The sound was familiar now, an intimate rhythm that skipped once, then twice. I crossed the room and lifted the sash, letting the cool air fold around me before Jaxon’s shadow filled the opening. He swung in with practiced quiet, shoulders passing my frame by inches. For a moment we just stood there, the silence betw

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