CHAPTER 1 — Lilies at the Edge of the Woods

Moonbrook looked like a postcard someone had held too close to a flame. Not burned. Warmed, softened at the edges. The late afternoon sun poured honey over the roofs and the quiet main street, gilding shop windows and turning passing dust into something almost holy. Even the people moved like they belonged in a gentler world: slow steps, unhurried glances, conversations that took their time.I didn’t. I drove into town with my hands locked around the steering wheel like it might bolt, like the whole car might decide it had made a mistake bringing me here. My little sedan was packed with what survived the life I’d detonated: clothes in vacuum bags, a few framed photos I couldn’t bear to throw away, my battered veterinary textbooks, and three boxes labeled KITCHEN even though I didn’t know yet if the kitchen in my new house had running water.The air smelled like pine sap and damp earth. The forest sat in a dark green ring around the town, close enough to feel like a wall and ancient en

Last Updated : 2026-01-20

CHAPTER 2 — Small Town Stares

The door opened like a new chapter. Night air spilled into my house, cold, pine sweet, threaded with damp soil and something sharper beneath it, like iron left out in rain. My porch light carved a small, weak circle into the dark, and beyond it, the forest waited, swallowing moonlight in its throat. That agonised growl came again. Not loud, worse than loud. It was strangled, as if pain had hands around its neck. It vibrated through my bones, turning my skin to gooseflesh and my stomach to stone. “Okay,” I whispered, like the word could anchor me. “Okay, Nora. You’re not… you’re not doing anything stupid.” My body disagreed. My feet moved anyway. I stepped onto the porch, barefoot because I’d forgotten my own common sense in the same place I’d left my last shred of certainty. The boards groaned under me. The sound felt enormous. I stood very still and listened. Wind sifted through branches. Something small, rabbit, squirrel, scratched through dead leaves. Far off, an owl called onc

Last Updated : 2026-01-21

CHAPTER 3 — Silver Chain, Blue Eyes

The night met me at the bottom of the porch steps. Cold air slid into my lungs, crisp with pine and wet moss, and I forced myself to breathe slowly, one inhale for courage, one exhale for control. My flashlight beam cut a pale tunnel through the dark, catching the shine of dew on grass and the occasional white flick of a moth’s wing.The forest watched with that heavy, waiting stillness that made you aware of your own heartbeat, your own noise, and your own softness.A howl rose in the distance. It wasn’t close enough to rattle my bones this time, but it carried that same ancient authority, like something calling roll in a language older than my fear. Then the sound again. That choking, ragged growl, half pain, half fury, dragged through the trees.I moved. The way you move toward a crying animal on the side of the road even when you know it might bite. Leaf litter gave beneath my sneakers as I crossed the yard and stepped under the first branches. The forest swallowed the porch light

Last Updated : 2026-01-23

CHAPTER 4 — Gone Before Morning

I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I told myself I was only resting my eyes, only letting the last of the adrenaline drain out of my veins, only giving my shaking hands a chance to remember they belonged to me. I sat on an overturned storage crate near the workbench, the garage lamp turned low, and listened to the wolf breathe.In. Out. In. Out. A tide dragging itself back from the shore.Outside, the forest made its own quiet music, wind through needles, something small skittering in leaves, the far off hush of night creatures negotiating space. I tried to match my breath to the wolf’s, like if I could synchronize myself to him, I could make the world stop feeling so sharp.My eyelids lowered. My mind, traitorous, tender, slipped into a dream.I dreamed of Kyle. Of that kitchen with its ugly light and its stale smell of coffee I hated, of his voice turning sweetness into a blade.'You’re too sensitive, Nora. You make me do this. No one else would put up with you.'I couldn’t move. Couldn’

Last Updated : 2026-01-25

All Chapters of When the Alpha Howls: Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 1 — Lilies at the Edge of the Woods

CHAPTER 2 — Small Town Stares

CHAPTER 3 — Silver Chain, Blue Eyes

CHAPTER 4 — Gone Before Morning