Chapter No: 01

One Year Later

Elena's P.O.V.

The cemetery was empty, and I preferred it that way.

Most people visited graves in the morning, carrying bouquets, sympathy, and everything they thought grief required. By late afternoon, the crowds were gone, leaving behind only silence and the occasional rustle of leaves in the wind. Silence was easier. It didn't ask if I was doing better. It didn't tell me Ronan would want me to move on. And it definitely didn't look at me with pity.

The gravel path crunched beneath my boots as I made my way through the rows of headstones. In one hand, I carried a paper cup of coffee. In the other, nothing at all.  I didn't bring any flowers; I made sure I never carried any, because Ronan hated flowers.

A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as I stopped in front of the polished granite marker. The smile disappeared almost immediately. It had been one year, an entire year, three hundred and sixty-five days. And that itself felt impossible. Yet, there it was.

His name, etched permanently into stone.

RONAN ALARIC BLACKWOOD

Beloved Son. Beloved Fiancé. Gone Too Soon.

I stared at the words for a long moment.

During the first few months after his death, I'd hated the headstone; I'd hated the finality of it; I'd hated the way everyone seemed to accept it, as if carving a name into stone somehow made a tragedy easier to understand.

Now, I simply tolerated it, not because I believed it, but because fighting it was exhausting.

I crouched and set the coffee beside the grave.

"Medium roast," I said softly. The sound of my own voice startled me.

"I know. It's terrible."

A breeze swept through the cemetery, and for one impossible moment, I imagined him laughing. Not the polite laugh he used around strangers, the real one, the one that started low in his chest and always made me smile before I even knew why.

My throat tightened at the thought. One year later, and I still turned toward unexpected sounds, expecting to see him. I still reached for my phone whenever something funny happened. I still woke some mornings forgetting, then remembered it all.

All over again.

I sank down onto the grass. The late-afternoon sun painted everything gold, and the world looked unfairly beautiful, like it always did. The day after Ronan died, the sky had been blue. Birds had sung, people had gone to work, children had laughed, the universe hadn't paused for even a second.

And I'd hated it for that.

"You know what the worst part is?" I asked the headstone.

The stone, predictably, remained silent.

"It's not the grief."

My fingers traced the edge of the paper cup.

"It's getting used to it."

That was the part nobody warned you about. Not the crying, not the sleepless nights, not the panic, but the adaptation. The slow, terrible realization that life continued, bills still needed to be paid, groceries still needed to be bought, laundry still piled up, the world still kept turning.

And somehow, I kept turning with it, not living, just surviving, and somehow learning how to carry the weight instead of being crushed beneath it.

A shadow crossed the grass, which made me look up. An elderly woman was placing fresh flowers several rows away.

White lilies.

The sight made me snort.

"See?" I muttered toward the grave.

"Lilies."

The memory surfaced immediately.

Three years ago, in a flower shop. Ronan and I had been doing some pretend pre-wedding planning. He'd stood in the middle of an aisle, looking deeply offended by every arrangement in sight.

"Why are funeral flowers so depressing?"

"Because they're funeral flowers."

"Still. If I die, promise me nobody brings lilies."

"Why?"

"Because they look sad."

"You're criticizing flowers."

"They're judging me."

"Flowers aren't judging you."

"Those ones are."

The memory hit me harder than I expected.

I closed my eyes because, for a moment, I swear that I could almost hear him.

Almost.

When I opened them again, the cemetery was silent and empty. Reality settled back into place, and the familiar ache returned. It wasn't sharp anymore, but sadly it was simply permanent, like an old scar.

I looked toward the forest bordering the cemetery. The trees stretched dark and endless beyond the graves. Most people avoided those woods, especially at night, because of the local legends and old stories about missing hikers and animal attacks. Every small town had its myths, and ours had more than most.

The full moon would rise tonight. I'd noticed it marked on my calendar that morning, not intentionally, just a coincidence.

Yet the knowledge lingered; it always did.

The night Ronan died had been a full moon. The detail shouldn't matter, yet somehow, it did.

I stood up slowly, grass clinging to my jeans, and I brushed it away before picking up the second coffee I'd brought.

My coffee.

Which was now cold.

I glanced at the headstone one last time.

"I'll see you next week."

The words slipped out automatically, as though he could hear me, as though I hadn't spent the last year talking to a stone, as though some part of me still believed he was listening.

Maybe a part of me always would.

I turned and started down the path. The wind shifted, the leaves trembled, and from somewhere deep within the woods, a howl echoed through the evening.

I stopped.

Every muscle in my body locked; the sound rolled across the cemetery, and my pulse stumbled. Because I knew that howl. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew it.

The same howl, the exact same one, the one I'd heard one year ago, on the night Ronan Blackwood died, and for the first time in twelve months, fear stirred beneath my grief.

I stood motionless, staring at the dark tree line. The forest stared back, silently waiting. The howl came again, closer this time, and something about it felt almost...

Familiar.

Then just as quickly, the sound vanished, leaving behind only silence.

And the uneasy feeling that somewhere beyond those trees, something was watching me.

Something that knew my name.

Something that had been waiting for me to listen.