The night felt heavy as Alice slipped out of the house. The walls behind her no longer felt safe; every shadow reminded her of the truth she wished she hadn’t heard. Her father’s voice—angry, broken—still echoed in her mind, while her mother’s confession replayed again and again, cutting deeper each time.The Alpha of the Crimson Moon Pack…Alice hugged herself as she walked quickly down the lonely path away from the Ashford home. Her steps crunched on the gravel, her breaths uneven. Every part of her wanted to turn back, but she couldn’t. Not tonight. She needed answers. She needed Liam.By the time she reached the edge of the forest, her legs were weak from both fear and exhaustion. She stopped, staring into the dark woods. The cold air brushed against her skin, warning her to stay away, but her heart pushed her forward.Liam’s home sat deeper inside, close to the Crimson Moon Pack’s grounds. Alice had only been there once before, but it had left a mark. It felt strange, dangerous,
The Ashford home no longer felt like home. Since the night Samuel received the results from the clinic, the walls carried a tension that pressed down on everyone inside. The house was quiet—too quiet—but beneath that silence was a storm waiting to break.Samuel had lived his whole life with discipline. He’d fought monsters in the woods, bled alongside his brothers-in-arms, and stood his ground against death itself. But nothing had prepared him for this—the thought that the daughter he had raised, the girl he had held as a baby, might carry the blood of the very creatures he’d sworn to hunt.He sat at the dining table long after dinner plates had gone cold. His fists rested on the wood, knuckles white, chest heaving. Sophia stood across from him, her hands twisting nervously around the hem of her blouse. She had seen Samuel angry before, but this was different. His silence was worse than any outburst.Finally, he raised his eyes to her. They weren’t the eyes of the man she married; the
The morning after she healed, the Ashford house felt wrong—too quiet. Normally her dad filled the kitchen with noise: coffee brewing, chairs scraping, the radio. That day he just stood at the counter staring into a cup of cold coffee, shoulders tight, jaw set.Alice hovered by the doorway, stomach in knots. She wanted to say it was fine, just a scratch, don’t worry. But the words wouldn’t come out.Finally he turned and looked at her. His eyes — always sharp and in control — had something new in them. Fear.“You’re up,” he said flatly.Alice forced a smile. “Yeah. I feel… okay.”He looked at her too long, like he was checking for something hidden. Then he put his mug down, grabbed his jacket, and said, “I have work.”“Dad—” she started.“Stay home today.” His voice was low. It wasn’t mean, but it wasn’t a question either. Then he left and the door slammed.Alice’s heart beat hard. Whatever had changed inside the house was bigger than she thought.At school she drifted through classes
Alice lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling in Mira’s bedroom. The faint glow from the streetlamp outside slipped through the curtains, leaving silver streaks on the walls. The world outside felt calm, but inside her chest it was chaos. She couldn’t stop seeing Liam and Kane in the woods—fangs bared, claws flashing in the moonlight. The snarls, the breaking branches, the sharp smell of blood—it wouldn’t leave her.Sleep refused to come. Every time she shut her eyes, the memories came back: Liam’s face twisting as he shifted, Kane’s warning voice, the truth she had stumbled into.“You’re restless,” Mira’s voice cut into the silence.Alice turned her head. Mira was lying beside her, resting on one elbow, studying her with concern. Her dark hair spilled across her shoulder, and in the dim light, her eyes looked softer than usual. She didn’t look like the popular, untouchable girl everyone feared at school. Right now, she looked almost gentle.“I can’t sleep,” Alice admitted quietl
Alice barely remembered how she stumbled out of the woods, branches clawing at her arms, her lungs aching with every ragged breath. Her mind spun in fragments—eyes glowing in the dark, snarls that cut through the silence, Liam’s face shifting into something inhuman.Her Liam.The boy who smiled at her like she was the only girl in the room, who leaned too close when he teased her in class, who felt like a stolen secret she wanted to keep forever. But now he wasn’t just Liam anymore. He was one of them.Her knees nearly buckled by the time she reached her street, and she pressed her palm against a fencepost, grounding herself against the spinning world.“Alice?”Her name shot through the fog in her head. She jerked her eyes up, panic surging—only to find Mira standing beneath the flickering glow of a streetlamp. Her books were clutched to her chest, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail, and her brows pinched together in worry.“Oh my God—you’re pale. What happened?”Alice opened her m
The figures vanished into the night.One second, Liam and Kane, stood facing each other, their bodies stiff like they were ready to fight. The tension was so strong it felt like the air itself was pressing down. The next moment, their shapes slipped into the darkness, disappearing too quickly to be natural. Alice’s breath caught in her throat.Every hunter instinct she had screamed that something wasn’t right.Her heart pounded, but her legs were already moving before her mind told her to stop. She followed their trail into the shadows, the ground soft enough to dull her footsteps. This was exactly what she’d been trained for, moving quietly, tracking signs no one else would notice, chasing in the dark. If not for that training, she might have stayed frozen on the sidewalk, pretending nothing had happened. But she couldn’t ignore it. Her gut told her it mattered.The trail wasn’t obvious. Just a strange ripple in the air, a faint heat in the breeze. She followed it into the woods behi