Novel & Cerita Three Years Hollow

"I... want to donate... my body. Needs... family signature. I sent... the form." My brain was sluggish. The words came out in fragments. Her voice went taut. "Laila, how many times have I told you, I'm busy! Stop making things up." I hesitated, then said, "My wolf... has been deteriorating. For three years." A scoff. "Three years?" She said it back slowly, her voice laced with icy disdain. "Laila, wolf decay doesn't last three years. You're lying again. And the last time you showed up, your color was perfectly fine."

"Ivan. I know that you're hurt…" "Do you? Because I seem to be the only one around here who feels my pain! She disappeared for three years! Three good years with my baby girl, Tina. She did not let me see her. I searched for them everywhere, in the entire world. Pulled every single resource I could, sent men to the ends of the earth but she wasn't anywhere! I asked myself with every passing day if she had died. If my baby was still alive. Guess what? They have been alive all this time! And she….and she…"

Elone's POV Marcus's words cut through me like shards of silver. My face drained of color. For a heartbeat, my vision blurred, and the rain lashing against the car window turned into a muddy, grey smear. Three years. Three hellish years in Hollowstone. I could still conjure the smell of scorched flesh from the silver chains, the rhythmic sound of laughter and boots hitting my ribs in the dark—those inmates who were "arranged" to look after me. I could replay the sound of my own bones snapping with my eyes closed.

“I’m not letting you go alone. Not into cursed lands. Thane will go. You’ll have guards. We’ll do it your way—but not recklessly.” A small smile curled my lips. “Thank you.” He didn’t smile back. “Just promise me you’ll return.” “I promise,” I whispered. --- The journey to the Hollow took two days. Thick fog blanketed the road, and the horses were uneasy. I rode beside Thane, who remained stoic as always, but his eyes never stopped scanning the horizon. The Hollow wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t a ruin or even a cave—it was a spiral stone pathway leading into the earth, as though the ground itself had coiled into a tunnel.

The weight in the air. On the third day, they reached the Hollow Fen. Or what was left of it. The marsh that used to swallow men whole was dry. Cracked earth stretched for miles. In the center stood a single tree. Dead for a hundred years. Now its bark glowed faint blue, and names carved into it bled light. Aria dismounted first. *Kael. Mara. Corin. Lir. Myra.* The original five. The names pulsed in time with the Moonstone.

She'd even scold me for drinking a sip of water inside. I hadn't sat in this car for the better part of a year. Now, the floor mats were covered in cigarette ash. The seat had a big hole burned through it from a cigarette butt. And the car reeked of a certain indescribable, intimate smell. I stayed inside like I was punishing myself, sitting there for three full hours. I didn't open the door until night fell. The pain in my heart had gone numb. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

Gael, Hakeem, and I had passed out after four hours of non-stop mating. I was sandwiched between my two men, my head resting on Hakeem’s chest and Gael’s leg and arm thrown over both of us as he snuggled into my back. I felt as if I had just fallen asleep when flashes and fragments of dreams began to play through my mind. They were disjointed, speeding through my mind almost too fast to catch. There is Charlie holding two pups in her arms, the pack being attacked on the western front, Arya fallen to her knees sobbing in the middle of a battlefield, funeral pyres, me looking down at my pregnant stomach with Gael and Hakeem smiling down at me, whoops of victory and wails of defeat. As the

“Aria.” I stepped out into the yard, cloak billowing. Kael followed. Lyra too. And standing before the gate we thought long sealed… was a tear. A rift in the air itself. It pulsed once, then again. Then a hand reached through. Not human. Not a wolf. A third kind. The Prophetess’s voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. *“The gate is opening. The vessel has awakened. The Hollowed moon is only the first. There are three.”*

“The Hollow is near.” They crested a ridge, and beyond it, nestled in a glade shrouded in mist and snow, lay ancient ruins. Black stone pillars jutted from the earth like broken teeth. Vines coiled around archways inscribed with runes Lyra couldn’t read, but somehow felt. This was it. The Hollow. A place older than blood, older than Alpha lines, older even than the curse. Kaelen motioned her forward, but paused before crossing the threshold.

Carl pulled her into his arms and said, "Don't cry, Pheebs. Everyone has their own destiny." What bullshit! I didn't believe in that rubbish, yet my fate had played such a huge prank on me. It had turned me into such a harbinger of misfortune. I saw the slight smile on Carl's face. He seemed to be pleased that I was dead. He and the rest of them surrounded my body. Silence descended upon them as they looked at my photo and urn. Gary said grimly, "Holly called me this afternoon and told me she was going to die. She wanted us to have one last meal with her."