The Wolves in the Dark

ISLA

I found the article late at night, buried in an old digital archive I almost gave up searching through. The headline was small and easy to miss: "Northern Wolves Luna Vanishes Without a Trace." It was fourteen years old, and most of it read like nonsense, talking about some private family tragedy connected to the hockey organization, but it was the photograph that made me stop breathing.

The image was damaged, the edges burned like it had survived a fire, and half the woman's face was gone. But the part that remained, the eyes, the shape of her cheekbone, the way she tilted her head slightly to the side, made my stomach twist into a knot I couldn't explain.

She looked like me.

I sat there staring at that photograph for a long time, telling myself it was nothing, just a strange coincidence, people looked alike all the time. But some part of me, some quiet part I usually ignored, whispered that this wasn't a coincidence at all.

I didn't get to think about it much longer.

When I got home that night, my front door was unlocked, even though I always locked it, always, without fail. My heart climbed into my throat as I stepped inside slowly, my keys held tight between my fingers like a weapon.

Nothing looked wrong at first. My laptop was still on the table. My jewelry box was untouched. But when I walked into my bedroom, my chest went tight and cold.

The drawer where I kept my old photographs was open, and one photo was missing. Just one. A picture of me at six years old, standing in front of a house I didn't even remember living in, the only photograph I owned from before my memories really began.

Someone had broken in, ignored everything valuable, and taken only that.

I should have called the police. I should have been smart about this. But all I could think about was Ethan's warning, and the man who'd been watching my building, and the strange damaged photograph of a missing woman who looked exactly like me, and I knew, somehow, all of it was connected.

So instead of calling the police, I decided to follow the one lead I had left. A source inside the Northern Wolves organization had mentioned an old training facility outside the city, one that wasn't used anymore, officially. I told myself I was just going to look. Just take some photographs, gather some proof, and leave.

That was a mistake, and I knew it the moment I climbed through a broken window and found myself standing in a long concrete hallway that smelled like old medicine and something else underneath it, something metallic I didn't want to think about too closely.

There were rooms full of medical equipment, way too advanced for a simple hockey team. I found files with names I didn't recognize, strange notes about "shifting stability" and "bloodline strength," words that made absolutely no sense to me but filled me with a creeping dread anyway.

I was photographing a file when I heard footsteps behind me.

I spun around, and a man I didn't recognize was standing in the doorway, his face twisted with anger. "You shouldn't be here," he said, his voice low and dangerous.

"I was just leaving," I said, backing away, my heart slamming against my ribs.

He moved fast, faster than any normal person should have been able to move, and grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise. I screamed and tried to pull away, panic exploding through my whole body, and that was when everything changed.

A sound ripped through the hallway, a deep, terrible growl that didn't belong to any human throat, and the man's grip loosened just enough for me to yank myself free and fall backward against the wall.

What I saw next made my mind simply refuse to work correctly.

Killian was there. Except he wasn't Killian anymore, not really, because where he had been standing a second before, there was now an enormous wolf, easily the size of a small car, with dark fur and eyes that were somehow still his eyes, still full of that same intensity I'd seen in the interview room. Beside him, two more wolves appeared, one with lighter fur that I somehow knew was Asher, and one with a leaner, angrier posture that could only be Zane.

I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. My whole body had gone numb with shock.

The man who'd grabbed me turned and ran, but Zane's wolf was faster, cutting him off in seconds, teeth bared in a way that made my blood run cold. Killian's wolf turned toward me, and for a moment, despite everything, despite the impossibility of what I was seeing, I felt strangely safe.

"You're okay," a voice said, and I realized with horror that it was Killian's voice, except he was speaking without moving his wolf mouth at all, like the words were forming directly inside my head. "Isla, you're okay. We've got you."

"This isn't real," I whispered, pressing myself against the wall. "This isn't real, this isn't real—"

In the chaos of pulling away, I hadn't noticed the cut on my arm until I felt the sting, a thin line where the man's grip had torn my skin. A few drops of blood fell to the concrete floor.

And everything stopped.

Killian's wolf went rigid, every muscle locked tight, his head snapping toward the blood on the ground like it had made a sound only he could hear. Asher's wolf let out a whine that sounded almost like pain. Zane abandoned his chase completely, turning back toward me with a speed that didn't seem possible, his massive body suddenly trembling.

Then, one by one, more wolves appeared from the shadows of the hallway, ones I hadn't even known were there, and every single one of them lowered their heads toward the ground.

Toward me.

Like I was something sacred. Like I was something they were all supposed to protect with their lives.

"What's happening?" I whispered, my voice shaking so hard I could barely form the words. "What is wrong with all of you?"

Killian shifted back into his human form so quickly it made my head spin, and suddenly he was kneeling in front of me, his bare shoulders heaving, his eyes full of an emotion so raw it frightened me more than the wolves had.

"Your blood," he said, his voice breaking. "Isla, your blood—"

"What about it?" I demanded, my whole body shaking now, fear and confusion crashing into each other inside my chest.

"They shouldn't be bowing," Asher said quietly, shifting back as well, staring at the wolves around us like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing either. "Wolves don't bow to just anyone, Isla. They only bow to one person."

Zane knelt down slowly, his human eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time since I'd met him, there was no anger in his expression at all. Only fear, and something that looked almost like grief.

"Our Luna," he said quietly.

I stared at all three of them, at the wolves still lowering their heads around us, at the blood still dripping slowly from my arm onto the concrete floor, and I understood, with a terror that went bone deep, that whatever was happening to me was so much bigger than anything I had ever imagined.