All Chapters of Beneath the Howling Pines: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

We left the altar behind, but it followed us.Not physically, but in the weight of the silence between us—the way Elena kept glancing over her shoulder, as if the stone might rise and speak our names. I felt it too. That heavy, ancient awareness sinking into the roots beneath the forest floor, pressing against my thoughts like cold fingers.The old magic wasn’t sleeping anymore.It had seen her.And now it was watching.“Elena,” I said, keeping my voice low as we moved through the thickets, “if something happens—if I ever tell you to run—”“I won’t,” she cut in, not even slowing her pace.I stopped walking.She turned around, frustrated. “What?”“You should,” I said. “This bond—it’s not just a gift. It’s a target. If the curse sees a way to break it before it forms, it will.”She folded her arms, her eyes burning gold. “Then we don’t give it that chance.”Gods. She didn’t even know the half of what she was walking into. Brave. Reckless. Her wolf, Nyx, simmered just beneath the surface

The dreams came again. This time, I wasn’t a girl. I was a wolf—Nyx, full and furious—running through the forest with blood on my paws and fire in my chest. Behind me, I heard voices. Not human, not wolf. Something older. Something cracked and crawled out of the dark. She walks the path of two. She breaks what was bound. I woke with my sheets tangled and my heart thudding like a war drum. My breath fogged in the cold air of my room, and I swore I saw shadows curling beneath the door before they vanished. I didn’t sleep after that. Instead, I rose before dawn and headed out toward the Bonewood. It wasn’t part of our usual territory—not claimed, not watched. The Bonewood was ancient, wild, a place even rogues avoided. Some said it was cursed. Others said it was the place where the curse had started. I didn’t tell Mara where I was going. I couldn’t. She’d try to stop me. Silas might’ve too. But I needed answers. And the dreams were pulling me here. The trees grew thinner as I re

Elena The clearing was silent. Above us, the moon had risen—full, pale, watching. The trees formed a circle of ancient limbs, shadowed and still. This was no ritual passed down by the elders. No choreographed ceremony to celebrate some happy, destined moment. This was raw. Real. Ours. Silas stood in front of me, moonlight catching the silver in his eyes. His shoulders were tense, his breath slow, like he was holding something back. “Are you sure?” he asked. His voice was low, rough. Vulnerable. I nodded. “I am.” Nyx pressed forward, ready and wild beneath my skin, her energy pulsing in waves. She wanted this. Needed this. Not just for the bond. For him. For us. I stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat coming off his body. “Then say the words,” he said, almost a whisper. I swallowed. My throat felt too tight, but the words came anyway—like they’d been carved into my bones long ago. “I, Elena Blackthorne of the Ashfang Pack, call upon the moon to witness my vow. I offe

By nightfall, I was gone.Not from Elena. Not from the Ashfangs.But from myself.The pull of my bloodline dragged me east, deeper than I wanted to go. Deeper than Elena would ever let me, if she knew. I told her I needed to scout, to track the cursed wolves and make sure we weren’t walking into an ambush.It wasn’t a lie.Just not the whole truth.Because beneath the scouting, beneath the loyalty, there was something else.Obligation.The curse that haunted both our bloodlines didn’t come from thin air. It was seeded long ago—in violence, in betrayal, in something our ancestors had tried to bind and bury but never truly understood.And the Blackmoor name was at the center of it.Which meant I was too.The further I moved into the eastern woods, the colder the air became. The trees bent oddly here, warped and twisted, their bark streaked with black veins like something rotted them from the inside out. These weren’t Ashfang woods anymore.This was old ground.Cursed ground.I shifted j

There was something wrong with Silas.He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.I could feel it.Not through words, not even through the mate bond—not exactly. It was in the pauses between our conversations, in the way he looked at me like he was trying to memorize something he’d never see again.Like he was preparing for something I wasn’t being told.At first, I told myself I was imagining it. Stress. Training. The cursed wolves are breathing down our necks. But by the third time he flinched when I reached for him, I stopped pretending.He was keeping something from me.“Hey,” I said one afternoon, as we finished sparring and stood beneath the pine canopy, sweat glistening on our skin and breath clouding the air. “Talk to me.”Silas hesitated, jaw clenched. “About what?”“Don’t insult me,” I snapped. “You’ve been quiet since the bond sealed. And not the normal, brooding-rogue-wolf kind of quiet. The something’s wrong and I’m pretending it’s not kind of quiet.”He looked away.That was an