Chapter Six – Hunger Beneath the Skin

The night he said my name in the woods, I didn’t sleep.

Not because I was afraid. Not even because I was burning with confusion.

Because he followed me into my dreams.

This time, it wasn’t me reaching for him.

It was him.

He stood in the shadows of my mind, half-formed by moonlight, his voice low and rough like gravel. "Why do you keep coming here?" he asked, as if I were the one invading his sleep.

I wanted to answer. My lips parted. But the words never came. He stepped closer. His scent wrapped around me—pine and smoke and something dark and ancient.

He reached for me.

And I woke, trembling, drenched in sweat, his voice still echoing in my head.

Why do you keep coming here?

But it wasn’t me chasing the dreams anymore.

It was him.

When morning came, I still felt the imprint of his voice inside me. I moved like someone haunted, my limbs heavy with sleeplessness, my skin tingling with the echo of a touch that had never happened. The air felt too sharp. My clothes too tight. Everything in the Hollow seemed louder—more watchful. I didn’t know if I was imagining it, or if something had truly shifted after that dream.

I tried to keep my head down in the washroom, but my fingers slipped more than once. I dropped a ladle. Spilled ashwater on the floor. Tessa’s eyes narrowed on me the way a hawk watches a rabbit too slow to run.

And then she called my name.

Not shouted. Called.

And when she handed me the bundle of steaming linens, I knew before she spoke that I wasn’t going to the lower halls.

I didn’t expect to be sent above ground.

Mistress Tessa handed me the bundle of steaming linens with a warning glare and a clipped order to deliver them to the seamstress hall. "And mind your clumsy feet," she added, waving me off as if I were a fly.

I kept my head down as I walked, arms braced around the bundle, heart already hammering. The last place I wanted to be was in the center of the Hollow, especially today. Word had spread that Helena’s final fitting for the blood moon ceremony was underway. The air pulsed with a pressure I couldn’t name.

As I reached the open arch of the hall, the scent of crushed violets and silver needlework overwhelmed me. Girls fluttered like birds around Helena’s raised platform. I barely crossed the threshold when it happened—my foot caught on the uneven stone, and the bundle in my arms pitched forward.

Linens spilled. A tray of gold pins clattered to the floor. The room went dead silent.

I dropped to my knees instantly, scrambling to gather the mess, my face burning.

“Stop,” came the voice. Not Mistress Tessa. Not one of the seamstresses.

Helena.

She stepped down from her platform slowly, each movement deliberate, her silk gown whispering across the polished floor.

“I should have known,” she said coolly. “Only filth would track ash into my fitting. Tell me, mutt, do they not teach balance in the servants’ tunnels?”

I didn’t answer. My hands shook as I lifted the fallen pins.

Helena crouched beside me, one elegant finger tracing a lock of my hair back from my face.

“You’re the one he looked at,” she said softly, voice laced with venom. “I was wondering what spell you cast.”

No one else had noticed.

But Helena always noticed—because Helena saw everything. Every flicker of attention, every breath that didn’t bend to her. And somehow, in a room full of silk and bloodline daughters, she’d seen him look at me. Just once. Just enough.

And it had driven her mad.

I opened my mouth, but she slapped me.

Not hard. Not loud. But it echoed in the silence like a slap to the gods themselves.

“I asked you a question,” she whispered.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t flinch. I just stared.

Because I didn’t know what spell I had cast. I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

The doors opened behind me.

A hush fell like snow.

Boots. Authority. Cold.

He walked in like a blade unsheathed—silent, dangerous, final.

Caelan.

His eyes scanned the room and stopped on Helena’s hand still raised near my cheek. He didn’t yell. He didn’t threaten.

“Is this what you think strength looks like?” he said, voice like smoke curling through steel. “Striking girls who can’t strike back?”

Helena turned, quick with her smile. “Of course not, Caelan I was only teaching her to respect boundaries.”

He stared at her. “Then I suggest you start respecting mine. I am your Alpha. Speak accordingly.”

Then he looked at me.

Not through me.

At me.

“From this moment forward,” he said, his voice firm but measured, “every servant in this Hollow is to be treated with dignity. Rank does not excuse cruelty.”

The room stilled like it had forgotten how to breathe.

Helena’s smile faltered. “She’s a servant.”

His eyes didn’t move from mine.

“She is under my protection.”

And then he was gone, his cloak cutting through the hall like smoke.

But his name stayed.

Caelan.

I touched my cheek where Helena’s slap still burned.

And I knew something had just shifted—permanently.

Not in the Hollow.

In me.