All Chapters of THE HOLLOW WOLF: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The growl comes again. This time I saw him. A wolf steps out from between two trees. Dark gray. Big. Teeth are already out.I don't move. Every part of me wants to run but something stops me. You don't run from something like that. It'll chase you down before you get three steps."Easy," I say, and I keep my hands up so he can see them. "I'm not here to fight you."He doesn't answer, because he's a wolf, not a person. But his ears go flat and his lip pulls back more, and I get the feeling this isn't some animal that wandered up on me by accident. He's working. This is a patrol.A man steps out from behind him. Tall. Heavy gray coat, collar turned up against the cold. Maybe thirty years old. He looks at me like he hasn't decided yet if I'm trouble or just a headache."That's Grimwood land you're standing on," he says. "We don't get a lot of folks climbing out of the dirt at sunrise."My stomach drops. He saw the grave."I don't know what you saw," I say, trying to keep my voice from sh

They walk me through the big doors of Blackridge House with my wrists still tied, and every step across that stone floor feels like walking into a memory I'm not allowed to have.The entry hall hasn't changed. Same high beams. Same old tapestries on the walls. Same cold draft that never goes away no matter how many fires burn in the hearths. I used to run down this hallway laughing. I used to belong here.Now they're dragging me through it like a stranger.Cassian walks ahead of us, not saying a word, his back straight and stiff. I watch the width of his shoulders and try to match this man up with the one who used to pull me against his chest and tell me nothing bad would ever touch me in this house.He leads us into a small room off the main hall. A study. Dark wood, a fire already going, maps and papers stacked neat on a heavy desk. He waits until the guard shuts the door behind us before he turns to look at me full on."Untie her," he says.The guard hesitates. "Alpha, she was foun

Morning comes gray and cold, light filtering thin through the guest wing window, and for one confused second I forget where I am. Then the ache in my legs reminds me, and the unfamiliar face in the small mirror across the room reminds me harder.I sit up slow, joints stiff from sleeping in yesterday's mud-crusted clothes, and listen. No voices outside the door now. Just quiet.I cross to the window and look down at the courtyard below. Pack members move through their morning routines — hauling water, tending horses, carrying baskets of bread from the kitchens — and it all looks so ordinary, so achingly familiar, that my chest tightens with something close to grief.I used to walk down there every morning. I used to know every one of their names.A knock sounds at the door before it opens without waiting for an answer. The same young maid from last night steps in, arms full of folded clothes, eyes down."The Alpha said you'd need something clean to wear," she mumbles, setting the bundl

I go after the footsteps before I can think better of it. My legs are still tired from the walk into this place yesterday, but I run anyway, skirt catching on the hem, boots slipping on wet grass."Wait!" I shout, even though I don't know who I'm shouting at. "I just want to talk!"Nobody answers. Of course nobody answers.I get to the garden wall and look over it, and there's nothing. No person. No shape moving through the trees. Just the woods, quiet and gray, like whoever was there stepped out of the world completely."Come on," I say under my breath, scanning the tree line. "You were right there."Then I see it. A scrap of cloth caught on a low branch, dark green, torn at one edge like it snagged on the bark and ripped free. I climb halfway over the wall, stretch out, and pull it loose.It's not much. Just fabric. But somebody was here, close enough to watch me and Cassian in the garden, close enough to hear whatever we said to each other.I turn the scrap over in my hands and tha

It starts with a knock on my door, right after the guards bring word about the marker at the gate. I've been sitting on the edge of the bed since they left me here, staring at my hands, trying to figure out how much longer I can keep lying to a man who used to know every single thing about me."Selene." It's Dara's voice, soft, careful. "The Alpha wants you moved. Different room.""Why?""He didn't say. Just said to move you now, before he gets back from the gate."I follow her down the hall, and my stomach drops the second I see which door she's leading me to. Right next to my old chambers. The room I grew up sneaking out of at night to meet Cassian by the stables, the room where I used to lie awake dreaming about a life that got taken from me before I even got to live half of it."This one," Dara says, pushing the door open.I step inside, and it's smaller than my old room, but the window faces the same courtyard, and I know exactly which tree blocks the moonlight around midnight be