CHAPTER 3

Midnight crept closer.

Ava sat on the cot in the back office, staring at the glowing digits on her phone. 11:47 p.m. The note from Silas burned in her hand like a live wire.

She’d told herself she wouldn’t go. That she’d stay put, lock the door, wait for dawn. But the longer she stared at her father’s journal, the more the words she will awaken under the blood moon seemed to pulse on the page. No one here was giving her straight answers. Maybe Silas would.

She slid the journal into her backpack and stood. The station was quiet. Somewhere down the hall a coffee pot gurgled; the lone deputy on duty was snoring in the squad room. Rowan had gone out on patrol after an urgent call from Elias — “just an hour,” he’d said. “Lock the door until I’m back.”

Ava eased the lock open and slipped out.

The night air smelled of wet pine and smoke. Fog wrapped around the streetlights like gauze. She pulled up her hood and walked quickly toward the edge of town, heart hammering. This is crazy, she told herself. But you’re not going to learn the truth sitting in a locked office.

Hollow Creek lay two miles out, a narrow ravine where the water cut a silver line through the trees. As a kid she’d gone there with Rowan, skipping stones and catching tadpoles. Now, in the dark, it felt like a throat leading into the forest’s belly.

She heard it before she saw it: the rush of water over stones. Then the trees opened onto the creek’s edge. Mist hovered over the water like breath. Across the creek, a figure stood waiting.

Silas.

He looked less wild than he had on the road but no less dangerous. Dark coat, boots muddy, hair falling into his eyes. When she stepped closer he raised his hands slightly, palms empty.

“You came,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have,” she replied, voice tight.

“No,” he said. “But you had to.”

He motioned to a flat rock near the bank. She stayed standing. “You left a note at the station,” she said. “How?”

His mouth curved. “I have ways. The alpha’s walls don’t hold me. They never have.”

“Why warn me?” she demanded. “You’ve been stalking me since I got back.”

Silas’s gold-flecked eyes caught the moonlight. “Because you’re walking into a trap. Elias doesn’t want to protect you. He wants to claim you.”

“Claim me?”

“You’re the Cross heir,” Silas said softly. “Your father kept you hidden, but the mark gives you away. Under the blood moon you’ll have a choice: bind yourself to the Pack or become the hunter who ends it. Elias will tell you it’s destiny. It isn’t. It’s power.”

Ava’s pulse thundered. “Why should I believe you? You killed people in this town.”

His expression hardened. “I didn’t kill them. Those were Elias’s enforcers cleaning house. Framing me is convenient.”

“Convenient how?”

“It drives you to him,” Silas said. “Makes you desperate for his protection. Then, when the moon rises, he can bend you to his will.”

She stepped back, the creek lapping at her boots. “You’re telling me everything I thought I knew is a lie.”

“I’m telling you,” Silas said, “you have more choices than they want you to think.”

A branch snapped behind her. She spun. Two shapes emerged from the trees on her side of the creek — men, but moving with a fluid, predatory grace. Their eyes glimmered faintly gold.

Silas swore. “Too late.”

The men lunged. 

The first man came at her so fast she barely saw him move. Instinct took over. Ava ducked, stumbling backward on the slick stones, the cold rush of the creek soaking her shoes.

Silas was already moving. In one fluid motion he ripped off his coat and lunged, catching the attacker mid-stride. For a heartbeat they were both human — then the man’s face rippled, bones shifting, eyes burning gold as his hands curved into claws. Silas’s own change was subtler but no less violent: his nails lengthened, his teeth glinted sharp in the moonlight. They slammed together like wolves, rolling into the underbrush.

The second man darted for Ava.

She swung her backpack hard. It connected with a satisfying thud, knocking him sideways. He hissed, a low, animal sound, and grabbed her arm. Pain flared where his fingers dug in, heat and static racing under her skin. For an instant she felt something stir deep inside her — not fear but a pulse of raw, answering power.

“Let go!” she shouted.

Light flickered at the edge of her vision. The man cried out and stumbled back as if burned. He stared at her in shock before recovering, eyes narrowing.

Silas slammed his first opponent into a tree and turned, blood on his lip. “Run, Ava!”

She bolted upstream along the creek, branches whipping her face. Behind her she heard snarls, splashes, the crash of bodies in the undergrowth. Her heart pounded, breath tearing at her lungs. She didn’t know where she was going — only away.

The forest closed around her, mist glowing faintly with moonlight. She tripped on a root, caught herself, kept running. The journal in her bag thumped against her back like a heartbeat.

A figure appeared ahead, blocking the path. Broad shoulders, silver eyes catching the dark.

Elias.

He stepped forward, calm as a hunter. “Enough,” he said. “Come here.”

Ava skidded to a halt, panting. “What—what are you doing here?”

“Protecting you,” Elias said evenly. “Step aside.”

“From what?” she demanded. “Because it sure looks like you sent them!”

His expression didn’t change. “Come to me, Ava.”

Behind her Silas burst from the trees, one arm bleeding, eyes wild. “Don’t,” he snarled. “He’ll bind you if you cross to him.”

Elias’s gaze flicked past her to Silas, cold and assessing. “You’ve gone too far, Reed.”

Silas bared his teeth. “So have you.”

Ava backed up, caught between them, breath coming fast. She could feel the air thrumming, the two men poised on the edge of violence. Something inside her stirred again — that same strange current she’d felt when she touched the rogue. It rose up her spine like a living thing, whispering choose.

“Stop!” she shouted.

Both men froze, eyes on her. The pulse inside her peaked — and with it a shockwave of soundless force rippled out from her chest, bending the mist like wind. Silas staggered. Elias’s eyes widened a fraction.

Ava gasped. Whatever had just happened drained her like a plunge into icy water. Her knees buckled.

Silas caught her before she fell. “She’s awakening,” he hissed, as if to himself. “Too soon.”

Elias stepped forward, voice low but firm. “Give her to me, Silas.”

Silas’s grip tightened. “No. Not tonight.”

Before Elias could move, Silas swung her up into his arms and bolted into the trees, moving faster than a normal man could run. The forest blurred around them. Ava clutched at his shirt, dizzy, the world tilting.

“Where—where are you taking me?” she managed.

“Somewhere he can’t reach you,” Silas said. “If you want answers, you’ll get them now.”

Darkness folded over her as she slipped into unconsciousness.

Ava woke to the smell of woodsmoke.

For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was. The ceiling above her was rough-hewn timber, shadows dancing as firelight flickered across the walls. She sat up slowly, the blanket sliding from her shoulders. Her shoes were gone, her clothes damp but neatly folded over a chair. Beyond a doorway she heard the murmur of running water.

“Easy,” Silas’s voice said from somewhere behind her. “You fainted.”

She turned. He was crouched by a stone fireplace, shirt off, bandaging a cut on his arm. In the shifting light he looked less like a monster and more like a man who’d lived too long in exile—tired, wary, scarred.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“My place,” he said. “Old trapper’s cabin on the far side of the ridge. Wardings around it. Elias can’t track you here.”

She rubbed her temples. Her head ached, her chest still tingling with the echo of whatever force she’d unleashed. “You drugged me.”

“I didn’t have to,” Silas said. “You passed out on your own. Power awakening like that will drain you until you learn to control it.”

She stared at him. “So it’s true. All of it. The pack. The prophecy. Me.”

He didn’t deny it. “Your father hoped it would skip you. It didn’t. You’re stronger than he ever was.”

She hugged the blanket tighter. “You expect me to just believe you after everything? That Elias is the villain and you’re my saviour?”

Silas tied off the bandage and looked up at her, eyes steady. “I expect you to listen. He will offer you safety. He will tell you the choice is already made. But there’s another path.”

“What path?”

“Break the pact,” Silas said. “End the blood debt. Free the town and the pack from the curse they’ve lived under for centuries. You’re the only one who can.”

She shook her head. “I don’t even understand what I did back there.”

He stood, crossing to a shelf lined with jars and old books. He took down a worn leather-bound volume marked with the same pawprint-and-eye symbol as her father’s journal and handed it to her. “Then start here. Your family kept both halves of the prophecy. That’s why Elias fears you.”

She opened the book. Symbols and passages in a language she didn’t recognise stared back at her. In the margins someone had written translations in her father’s handwriting. A page near the middle had been flagged:

The Cross heir will awaken under the blood moon, calling the hidden power. The hunter and the pack, two halves of the same soul. Only she can sever or seal the bond.

Ava’s throat tightened. “Sever…or seal.”

“You feel it already,” Silas said quietly. “That pull inside you. It will get stronger as the moon grows. You can let Elias bind you to his will. Or you can choose for yourself.”

She closed the book, pulse racing. “And if I choose you? What then?”

Silas’s mouth quirked in a grim smile. “Then everything changes.”

Thunder rumbled distantly. She crossed to the window. Outside the forest stretched in silver and black, the mist rising in ghostly tendrils. For the first time she noticed the moon—full and heavy, streaked with a faint crimson at its edge.

“How long?” she whispered.

“Three nights,” Silas said. “That’s all we have.”

A knock sounded at the cabin door.

Silas’s head snapped up. His eyes flared gold. “No one should be able to find this place.”

The knock came again, harder this time.

Ava’s fingers tightened on the book. “Who is it?”

Silas moved silently to the door, sniffed the air, then yanked it open.

Rowan stood there, soaked with rain, his badge glinting under his coat. His expression was a mix of relief and fury.

“Ava,” he said. “Step away from him. Now.”