CHAPTER 1

The bus hissed as its doors folded open, releasing a puff of diesel breath into the pine-scented air.

Ava Cross hesitated on the step, fingers tightening on the worn handle of her suitcase. Silverpine looked the same as the day she’d left—grey roofs hunched under mist, crooked lampposts glowing weakly—but the air felt heavier, as if the forest itself was holding its breath.

She told herself she’d only come back for the funeral. Two nights, maybe three. Sign the papers, sort the house, leave. But the moment her boots touched the cracked asphalt of Main Street, the past came creeping back: the smell of wet bark, the distant howl that wasn’t quite a dog.

The bus wheezed shut behind her and groaned away down the hill, leaving her alone. No one had come to meet her. She pulled her coat tighter against the chill and started walking toward the old Cross house at the edge of town.

Silverpine’s main street had always been small, but now it felt shrunken, as though the buildings themselves had recoiled from some invisible threat. Shop windows were dark even though it was only late afternoon. A hand-painted sign outside the diner read CLOSED FOR PRIVATE EVENT. As Ava passed, the blinds shifted; a pair of eyes peered out, then snapped away.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Mara: Can’t make it to the wake. Don’t be mad.

Ava’s jaw tightened. Typical.

At the edge of town, the pavement crumbled into gravel, then into forest soil. The Cross house appeared through the mist like a memory—two stories of weathered clapboard wrapped in choking ivy, the porch sagging under years of neglect. She climbed the creaking steps, pulled the key from her pocket, and forced the door open.

The smell hit her first: dust, stale beer, something faintly metallic. Inside, curtains hung limp and grey. She set her suitcase down and wandered through the living room. The furniture was exactly as she remembered but dulled, as though someone had turned the saturation down on her childhood.

On the mantel stood a photograph: herself at ten, grinning at a county fair, her father’s arm heavy around her shoulders. That had been before the drinking. Before the shouting matches that ended with slammed doors and tears. Before she’d sworn she’d never come back.

A floorboard creaked behind her.

She spun. The hallway was empty, but the front door was swinging slightly on its hinges, as if someone had just stepped out.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded too loud in the stale air.

No answer.

She crossed to the door and peered outside. The porch was empty, the mist thicker now. A low growl rolled through the trees, so deep she felt it in her ribs more than she heard it.

Ava shut the door and locked it, heart thudding. Wolves, she told herself. Silverpine was surrounded by national forest; she’d heard them at night when she was a child. Nothing new. But it had been a long time since a sound made her skin crawl.

In the kitchen, she found a stack of unopened mail, bills and notices all addressed to her father. She leafed through them mechanically until a name caught her eye on a manila envelope: Rowan Black, Silverpine Sheriff’s Office. She slid it open. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a typed note: Call me. It’s not safe.

The handwriting at the bottom was unmistakably her father’s.

Ava set the paper down, palms damp. Her father had died three days ago, yet the warning felt fresh, urgent. It’s not safe. What had he gotten himself into?

Her phone vibrated again. This time it was a call. The screen read Rowan Black.

She hesitated, then answered.

“Hello?”

A deep voice came through, rough with static. “Ava? It’s Rowan. You’re in town?”

“I just got in. I—there was a note from my father, with your name on it.”

A pause. She heard him exhale. “Yeah. We need to talk. Can you come down to the station tomorrow morning?”

“I guess.”

“Be careful tonight,” he said quietly. “Lock your doors. Don’t go outside if you hear anything.”

The line went dead.

Ava stared at the phone. She and Rowan had been teenagers together—she remembered a lanky boy who fixed up his father’s truck in the school parking lot. Now his voice carried weight, authority, and something else: fear.

She shut off the kitchen light and carried her bag upstairs. Her old room smelled of cedar and mothballs. The posters were gone but the pale rectangles where they had hung remained like ghosts. She pulled back the sheets; they were clean but cold. As she undressed, a flash of movement outside the window caught her eye.

She froze. Beyond the glass, the forest loomed, dark and wet. Something moved between the trees—tall, silent, its outline almost human before it melted back into the shadows. A pair of eyes glimmered once, gold as coins, and vanished.

Ava snapped the curtain shut, heart hammering. Get a grip, she told herself. It’s just a deer, or…something. But deep down, the part of her that had never stopped dreaming of monsters whispered otherwise.

Sleep came in fragments. She dreamed of running barefoot through the woods, branches clawing at her skin, a heartbeat not her own pounding in her ears. When she woke, the room was full of pale dawn light and her phone was ringing.

Rowan again.

She cleared her throat. “Yeah?”

“Sorry to wake you. There’s been an incident,” he said. “I think you should see it.”

morning at the crime scene

Ava pulled on jeans and a sweater, drove her father’s rusty truck into town. Mist still clung to the roads, and the sheriff’s lights cut through it like beacons. At the edge of the national park, yellow tape cordoned off a clearing.

Rowan waited beside a patrol car. He looked older, shoulders broader, hair shorter but still unruly. A badge glinted on his chest.

“You came,” he said, relief flickering across his face. “Good. This way.”

She followed him under the tape. “What’s going on?”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” he muttered. “But you profiled killers in grad school, right?”

“I interned with the state bureau, yes. Why?”

He led her into the clearing. The smell hit her first: copper and wet soil. Then she saw the body.

A man lay sprawled against a tree, shirt shredded, chest and throat slashed open. His skin was grey with blood loss, eyes staring sightlessly at the canopy. Around him, the snow-melt mud bore huge prints: elongated, clawed.

Ava swallowed hard. “Animal attack?”

“That’s what I have to write in the report,” Rowan said. “But look at this.”

He handed her a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a fragment of cloth—dark, coarse fur clinging to it—but cut cleanly as if with a blade.

“And here.” He crouched by the body, pointing to the wounds. “Claw marks, sure, but also…parallel cuts. Almost surgical.”

Ava’s stomach churned. She’d seen this pattern before, on case photos from a murder spree in Oregon. Except the suspect there had never been caught, and the attacks had ended abruptly years ago.

She straightened. “This is impossible,” she whispered.

Rowan’s eyes met hers. “Tell me about it.”

A howl drifted through the trees, low and mournful. Every deputy in the clearing froze.

Rowan’s hand went to his holster. “They’re not supposed to be this close to town,” he muttered.

“Wolves?” Ava asked.

He didn’t answer.

Rowan signalled to one of the deputies to finish photographing the scene and stepped back with Ava. His voice dropped to a murmur.

“Last night I was on patrol near the ridge. I saw…something. Huge. Moving on two legs one second, four the next. When I followed the tracks here, I found him.” He nodded toward the corpse. “And there was a second set of prints leading away. Human prints.”

Ava hugged her arms to herself. The mist had thickened; each breath tasted of iron. “Why call me?”

“Because you’re the only one I know who can read this kind of thing,” he said. “And because your father warned me this was coming.”

She blinked. “My father?”

Rowan’s eyes flicked to her. “He came to me a month ago, said people would die if the ‘old pact’ was broken. He didn’t explain. I thought he was drunk. Then two nights ago he left a voicemail I never got to return. And now he’s dead.” His jaw tightened. “You sure it was a heart attack?”

“That’s what the coroner said.” But doubt crept into her chest like frost.

Another howl cut through the trees, closer this time. The deputies shifted uneasily.

Rowan lowered his voice further. “Listen, Ava. If you stay in town, you keep your doors locked. No wandering around at night. And if you hear something outside…” He trailed off, staring at the treeline.

A shadow moved between the pines. Taller than a man. It stopped, and for a heartbeat Ava thought she saw shoulders, a head, and two burning eyes. Then it melted back into the fog.

Rowan swore under his breath. “We’re done here. I’ll drive you back.”

They walked quickly to his patrol car. Inside, the heater hissed but did nothing for the chill running through Ava’s body. She watched the trees blur past the window.

“Do you believe in monsters, Rowan?” she asked softly.

He kept his eyes on the road. “I believe something out there believes in us.”

At her father’s house he stopped but didn’t get out. “I’ll check on you tonight,” he said. “And tomorrow we’ll talk about what your father left behind.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

He hesitated. “I’m sorry about him. He really did care about you.”

Ava climbed out and shut the door. The patrol car’s lights disappeared into the mist. She stood alone on the porch, the woods pressing close around the house, the photograph of the dead man burned into her mind.

Inside, she locked every bolt and pulled the curtains. Her father’s note still lay on the kitchen table. It’s not safe.

She carried it upstairs and sat on the bed, reading the words over and over until they blurred. Outside, a branch snapped. She held her breath.

Something moved in the yard. Slow, deliberate steps in the wet leaves. A shadow passed across the curtains. A faint scrape, like claws on wood, at the window.

Ava’s pulse thundered. She reached for the lamp switch just as the curtain twitched.

A face appeared beyond the glass—not quite human, not quite wolf. Gold eyes met hers. Its lips peeled back in something like a smile.

The lamp went out.

Darkness swallowed the room.