Evelyn didn’t sleep that night.She sat by the motel window, lights dimmed, watching headlights flash by like ghosts. The arrest was done. Cole was gone. But the victory tasted like ash.Mason was quiet behind her, typing on his laptop, the glow painting his face in cold light. Evelyn’s mind was a storm. Every thread she’d pulled had led to this point—but the knot was still tightening.“I can't stop thinking about what Harris said,” she murmured. “About Vaughn… about them.”Mason didn’t look up. “Government-sanctioned murder squads tend to keep people up at night.”She turned, eyes hard. “He’s not just cleaning the house. He’s planning something.”Mason’s fingers froze on the keyboard.“What is it?” she asked.“I just found the guest list for Vaughn’s fundraiser,” he said, spinning the laptop around.Evelyn scanned the screen. Senators. CEOs. Military brass. Judges. Half the city's power grid is in one room.“Jesus.”“It’s not a party,” Mason said. “It’s a show of force.”Evelyn’s voi
The morgue lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too white.Evelyn stood by Vaughn’s body, arms crossed tight against her chest. He lay there like a mannequin, the suit cut open, the autopsy already started. But something was off.“He bled less than expected,” the coroner said without looking at her. “Massive trauma, yes, but his system… it was already shutting down before the shot.”Evelyn blinked. “He was dying?”The coroner hesitated. “Not exactly. More like... empty. Drained. Like someone cut the power before you pulled the trigger.”She moved closer. Vaughn’s skin looked wrong up close—not pale, but taut, discolored. Almost like leather left out in the sun. No normal bruising. No swelling. Just cold meat.She noticed a mark on his neck. Small. Circular. Barely visible.“What's this?”The coroner shrugged. “Teeth, maybe. Not human. Could be a dog bite. You want toxicology rushed?”Evelyn nodded once. “Yeah. Rush everything.”Outside, the city was slick with rain.Mason waited in the
The door didn’t open. Not right away.The voice was gone, but the pressure wasn’t. It hung in the room like smoke—thick, cloying, invisible but real.Jamie was breathing fast, still gripping Evelyn’s wrist. Mason moved to the window and cracked it open a sliver, gun raised.“She’s not alone,” he said. “Footprints. More than one set.”Evelyn pulled free and crept to the peephole.Empty.Too empty.She opened the door fast.Nothing.No one is on the steps. No shadows on the street. Just the moon, too full, too close, casting everything in silver.But something had been here. She could feel it.A whisper curled up her spine. Not sound. Not quite. More like... recognition.She stepped outside.“Evelyn,” Mason warned, “don’t—”But she was already moving.Down the steps. Into the alley. The air felt thick, almost humid despite the cold. Like the city was holding its breath.There—at the end of the alley.A smear on the brick.Charcoal. Like in the cabin.But this time, it wasn’t a symbol. I
The whisper came again.Soft.Clawed.Evie.But this time, Evelyn didn’t flinch.She sat cross-legged on the safe house floor, eyes shut, Mason nearby but silent.Her breathing was slow. Steady.The charcoal words on the alley wall still burned in her memory—The Blood Remembers—but Evelyn wasn’t interested in memory anymore.She wanted clarity.Control.“Get out,” she said softly.Silence.Then—laughter. Echoing in her skull.“You can’t banish what you are.”But it wasn’t true.Evelyn gritted her teeth and reached inward—not with her mind, but with something deeper.Not a howl. Not a scream.A pulse.Her own.Her heartbeat rose—and with it, a presence. Hers. Not Isla’s. Hers.She pushed.The pressure inside her head surged—Isla snarled—And shattered.Evelyn collapsed backward, gasping. Cold sweat soaked her skin, but the silence in her head was pure.Mason rushed over. “What happened?”“She’s gone,” Evelyn said. “I forced her out.”Mason blinked. “You what?”“I wasn’t being haunted,
The Redbrook Medical Institute looked exactly like a place people were meant to forget.The parking lot was cracked and overgrown. The building itself sat hunched behind a rusting chain-link fence, and the sign out front faded to a ghost of its name. No lights. No sound. Just a building that had been shut down for a decade—officially, anyway.Evelyn stood next to Anika, hands in her coat pockets. The wind was biting. Her breath fogged."This place doesn’t exist on any of the current records,” Anika said, glancing down at the tablet in her hand. “No funding. No activity. But it used to be owned by a company tied to the Cartwrights’ old holdings.”“Of course it was,” Evelyn muttered.Mason pulled up in an unmarked sedan and stepped out, his eyes already on the building. “There’s no security, no cameras, no working power grid—at least not legally. I walked the perimeter. The place should be dead.”“But it’s not,” Evelyn said quietly.He didn’t argue.They didn’t break in—they didn’t need
Caroline lunged first.Faster than any of them expected.Mason barely got the metal pipe up in time—her claws scraped across it with a shriek of metal-on-metal. Anika fired twice, but the bullets only staggered Caroline for a split second. Then she was airborne again.Evelyn grabbed Emily, pulling her behind a collapsed table. “Stay down!” she shouted.Emily didn’t flinch. Her eyes were locked on her mother, but not with fear—with recognition.“This isn’t her full shift,” Emily said, her voice eerily calm. “She’s holding it back. She wants you alive.”Evelyn’s heart thundered. “Why?”“To make a point.”A loud crash—Caroline had slammed Mason against the wall. He groaned, slumping to the ground, but still breathing. Anika tried to flank, but Caroline caught her mid-move and hurled her across the room like a doll.Emily stood.Evelyn grabbed her wrist. “What are you doing?”Emily didn’t answer. She stepped out into the open, right in front of her mother.Caroline froze.Something in her
They left before dawn.The sky was slate gray, clouds low and thick like something was pressing down on the world. Evelyn sat in the passenger seat of the blacked-out SUV, the map burned into her memory. Emily rode behind her, silent but alert. Mason drove. Anika was in the second vehicle behind them, following at a distance with their backup gear and a sat-link jammer.The forest swallowed them whole as they veered off the last known trail.No signs. No roads. No birdsong.Only the crunch of tires over frostbitten ground and the slow, creeping feeling that they were being watched.Ashgrove wasn’t a place—it was a perimeter.A ring of hidden surveillance, pressure sensors, and sound-dampening tech buried under years of moss and leaves. Caroline’s notes had mentioned something called Project Fenrir, and the closer they got, the more real it became.“Eyes up,” Mason muttered. “We’re about to cross the outer line.”Evelyn checked her watch.Exactly 5:23 a.m.Right on time.The SUV stoppe
They emerged from the forest at first light—bruised, breathless, and shaken. Ashgrove was still out there, buried beneath the earth like a sleeping beast. It hadn’t been destroyed. It hadn’t even been wounded. Just… disturbed. And now it knew who they were. Evelyn leaned against a tree, her lungs burning as she tried to calm her racing heart. Behind her, Emily sat on the cold ground, staring back toward the place they’d barely escaped. Anika crouched nearby, already scanning for threats, while Mason stood guard, his gun still gripped tight No one spoke for a moment. But the silence wasn’t comforting—it was waiting. Evelyn finally broke it. “Is everyone okay?” Anika nodded stiffly. “Physically? Sure. Mentally? Ask me tomorrow.” Mason lowered his weapon, his jaw clenched. “We need to move. If they’re tracking us, this clearing’s too exposed.” Evelyn looked at Emily, who hadn’t moved since they got out. Her gaze was distant, but not empty—focused on something none of them could se
The file cabinet snapped shut behind Anika, but the tremor in her hands didn’t stop. The more she read, the worse it got. Evelyn’s life—the police academy, her transfer to Redbrook, even her first case—had been quietly nudged into place.The last page was different. A surveillance photo. Grainy. Two people in a forest clearing. Evelyn… and Lucian.Scrawled beneath:“If she bonds with him, we lose control.”She didn’t know what the Circle truly wanted, but she knew this: Evelyn was never just a cop. And someone had known it from the start.Captain Reyes arrived minutes later, his face grim as she spread the documents before him. “This goes higher than I thought,” he murmured. “We were just pawns in something old. Deep.”Anika’s jaw tightened. “Then it’s time we stopped playing their game.”The tie itched at his throat. Applause filled the council chamber, but Damian barely heard it. Another bill passed. Another piece of power secured.Yet his mind was miles away—in a hospital room. Wit
Evelyn hadn’t woken up.She was taken to a private hospital outside the city—off the grid. No press, no records. Her wounds were serious: internal bleeding, broken ribs, torn muscles. She’d lost a lot of blood.Mason sat by her bed, bruised and bandaged himself. He hadn’t slept much. The machines beeped steadily beside her, but she hadn’t moved.Lucian paced the hallway, silent, restless.Anika showed up on the second night. She brought clean clothes and Evelyn’s badge from the precinct. She set it quietly on the bedside table and leaned close to whisper, “You better wake up, Evie. We’re not done yet.”No response.Back in the city, Damian was already cleaning up. Suits, meetings, cameras. The press called it an “industrial explosion.” No one mentioned the Door, or Julian. That part had been erased.Behind closed doors, whispers moved fast. Some of his allies demanded answers. Others backed away, uneasy with the blood on his hands.Damian gave them a tight smile and said, “Everything
Evelyn stared into the blackness beyond the Door.It wasn’t just dark—it was heavy. Like a vacuum pressing against her chest. Something ancient, vast, and wrong stirred beyond the threshold, brushing her consciousness with the familiarity of a nightmare she’d never had—yet somehow always carried.“Close it,” Lucian growled, backing away. “Whatever’s in there, it remembers you.”She didn’t answer.Her feet edged closer.Inside the Door, the air shimmered. Shapes moved, too fast to be fully seen—like wolves made of shadow and bone. Whispers swirled around her, one voice cutting through the rest:> “E-113. Return.”She blinked. The world around her tilted. Her vision wavered—flashing images: a sterile white room, restraints biting into her wrists, her mother’s face pale with guilt, and Damian’s voice murmuring something about a key.The realization hit her hard—they didn’t just make her for this. They made her do it.Lucian grabbed her arm, grounding her. “Evelyn. You don’t belong to the
Mason’s breath came in ragged gasps as he pressed his back against the wet bark of a pine tree, one hand clamped to his side where blood seeped hot and steady through his fingers. His vision blurred, pulsing with pain and adrenaline. He could hear them—boots crunching dead leaves, radios murmuring, the hounds of the Circle loose in the dark.He hadn’t meant to separate from Evelyn and Lucian. The explosion back at the ridge had knocked him off his feet, disoriented him. By the time he’d regained his bearings, they were gone, and the forest was crawling with enemies.A branch snapped too close. Mason gritted his teeth and forced himself to move, every step a white-hot spike through his ribs. He wasn’t a werewolf like Evelyn or Emily—but he was something just as stubborn: a man too loyal to quit.A soft growl rumbled in the trees to his left.“Not now,” Mason whispered. “Don’t you dare.”The growl came again—closer. He turned, raising his knife, breath hitching.But what stepped out was
Evelyn didn’t know how long they’d been running—just that her legs wouldn’t stop shaking. Every breath scraped like glass down her throat. The forest blurred around her, trees spinning by in smears of brown and green. Lucian was ahead, always just out of reach, silent and fast like a shadow that refused to wait.She stumbled.Didn’t fall.Keep going.But her side was wet. Warm. She pressed her palm there and felt the sick, sticky heat of blood soaking through her shirt.Lucian finally slowed near a fallen tree. He crouched low, checking the air like a wild animal scenting danger, then waved her forward.Evelyn dropped beside him, gasping, the cold moss beneath her a small relief. “They’re not behind us.”“They will be,” he said without looking at her. “They always are.”She winced and shifted. Pain flared sharp through her ribs.Lucian turned. His eyes flicked to the dark stain spreading beneath her jacket. “You’re bleeding again.”“I noticed,” she muttered.“Let me see.”“I’m fine.”
Julian’s words hung heavy in the cold.Help me burn it all down.Evelyn didn’t lower her gun. Her arms trembled—not from fear, but from rage. Guilt. Grief. The memory of Emily's blood on her hands.“I’m not your weapon,” she said. “And I’m not your damn ally.”Julian’s gaze softened, like he pitied her.“You still think this ends with good guys walking away clean.” He stepped closer. Lucian bared his teeth, growling low.“You weren’t created to save the world, Evelyn. You were designed to lock it up. You’re a failsafe. Nothing more.”“Then why not kill me?” she snapped. “If I’m the key to the Door, and you want it buried—kill me right now.”Julian hesitated.Something flickered in his face—something broken.“Because you’re the only one who might still choose not to open it.”Then he moved.Fast. Too fast.Lucian lunged at the same moment, claws colliding with claws in a crack of sound that sent birds scattering into the night. Evelyn dove aside, rolled, and came up firing. Silver roun
The forest reeked of blood and gunpowder. Evelyn’s breath fogged in the cold air as she ran, heart thundering like a drum against her ribs. Behind her, the screams had stopped. That was worse than hearing them.Lucian didn’t say a word. He moved ahead, his shoulders hunched, muscles coiled tight like a wolf still waiting to pounce. His scent—earth, pine, and something wild—lingered in the air as Evelyn struggled to keep up. Her legs ached, her throat burned. But she couldn’t stop. Not now.A clearing broke through the trees. The ruined husk of an old ranger station sagged beneath snow-dusted beams. Lucian jerked open the door and motioned her inside.“Won’t hold them long,” he muttered, eyes scanning the dark treeline. “But it’s something.”Inside, Evelyn collapsed against the wall, gasping. The air stank of rot and old wood. Dust stirred with every breath.Lucian’s silhouette loomed in the dark, his eyes catching what little light remained—those unmistakable predator eyes. Still glow
The drive north felt endless.The night was thick, the roads winding and empty, swallowed by forests that pressed close on either side like silent watchers.Mason drove, white-knuckled. Evelyn sat beside him, bandaged but tense, scanning every shadow.Damian rode in the back, a silent and seething presence, barely human.None of them spoke.Not until the headlights finally picked out a crumbling, abandoned gas station at the end of a forgotten road."This is it?" Mason asked doubtfully.Damian nodded once. "He doesn’t trust anyone. Not even me."Evelyn’s hand hovered near her gun. "Good. Because I don't trust him either."They pulled up and killed the engine.Silence swallowed them.The building was sagging and half-eaten by moss and vines. A faded sign swung in the cold wind, creaking ominously."Stay behind me," Damian said, already shifting slightly — his bones rippling under his skin, his eyes burning gold.He led them through the ruins, past the broken pumps and shattered windows
The woods swallowed them.Branches clawed at Evelyn’s jacket as they ran, the scent of blood and rot thickening. Every shadow seemed to twitch. Every gust of wind carried a whisper of something monstrous.Mason moved silently at her side, rifle raised, eyes sharp. Damian led the way, faster than either of them, his senses stretched razor-thin.“He’s close,” Damian snarled under his breath.The world around them felt wrong—like the air itself was holding its breath.Then—A low growl vibrates through the trees.Evelyn spun just as the first creature lunged out of the darkness.It wasn’t Julian.It was something else.Once human, maybe. Twisted now. Skin stretched and gray, bones too long, fingers ending in talon-like claws. Its mouth gaped open, filled with rows of jagged teeth.Mason fired first. The shot ripped through the thing’s chest—but it didn’t drop.It staggered, shrieked like a wounded animal, then kept coming."Silver rounds, headshots only!" Damian barked.Evelyn squeezed t