When the dark comes calling
910 Words
Chapter Fourteen
The first sign was the silence.
Not the usual kind—the soft hush of nightfall, the stillness of trees. This was the kind that pressed, like a hand over the mouth of the world.
Elara noticed it as soon as she stepped back inside the cabin.
Cassian was no longer by the fire.
“Cassian?”
Her voice fell flat, swallowed.
Then she heard it—the low, guttural growl. Not from inside the room. From under it.
The floorboards trembled.
Her heartbeat quickened.
“Cassian?” she called again, louder now.
The door slammed open.
He stormed in, hair windblown, shirt torn, eyes lit not with fury—but with fear.
“They’re here.”
---
He grabbed her arm, yanked her toward the hearth. His hands were shaking.
“I thought the Bloodwood was protected—”
“They’re not coming through the forest,” he snapped. “They’re coming beneath it.”
The floor groaned again.
And then—something punched up through the wood.
A long, black claw.
Cassian shoved her back just in time as the floorboards exploded. A shadow poured through—twisting like smoke, crawling like flesh. It had no face. No voice. Just hunger.
Elara screamed.
Cassian shifted.
Not slowly. Not sensually. Violently.
Bones snapped.
Muscle stretched.
His body tore and reformed into something enormous, furred, lethal.
The wolf stood between her and the thing in the floor, growling low and deep.
Mine, that growl said.
You don’t touch her.
---
The thing lunged.
Cassian met it head-on. They crashed against the stone wall, claws slashing, teeth ripping.
Elara ducked, adrenaline flooding her veins.
A second shape burst through the wall—a pale, slick creature with too many limbs and no face.
She grabbed the iron fire poker, swung hard, and caught it across the side. It shrieked—a high, wrong sound—and lashed back, catching her shoulder.
Pain bloomed.
She stumbled back. Blood warm and sticky on her arm.
Cassian roared, fury overtaking finesse. He tore through the second creature, gore soaking his muzzle.
But more were coming.
Too many.
---
“Into the woods,” he growled—voice barely human.
“You said it wasn’t safe—”
“It’s not. But it’s safer than this.”
He didn’t wait.
He grabbed her—lifted her with one arm like she weighed nothing—and ran.
Out the door. Into the cold.
The air outside was worse now. Thick with rot. The trees groaned, as if aware. As if in pain.
They ran down a slope, past roots and stones. Cassian didn’t stop, didn’t speak, until the screaming stopped behind them.
When he finally set her down, Elara was gasping.
Bleeding.
But alive.
“What were they?” she asked.
He didn’t answer immediately.
Then, with a voice like broken gravel, he said: “Bloodless.”
---
“They weren’t wolves,” she whispered.
“No.”
“They weren’t Hollow Kin either.”
He shook his head.
“They were sent.”
By who, she didn’t ask. She already knew.
The woman in the church.
The one who called her the Moon’s Desire.
This wasn’t prophecy.
This was provocation.
They wanted to see what she could survive.
Again.
---
Cassian paced.
Naked now, his shift gone, body smeared with blood and ash.
He looked wild. More beast than man, but not because of the fangs or the muscle.
Because of the rage.
“They attacked my blood soil,” he muttered. “They broke sacred ground.”
Elara stood slowly, wrapping her torn arm with part of her shirt. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have to kill them.”
All of them.
---
They camped under the curve of a great tree. Fireless. Silent.
Cassian stayed awake.
Watching.
Elara didn’t sleep. Couldn’t.
She kept seeing the creature’s claws. The way they didn’t walk so much as drag themselves. As if gravity itself rejected them.
“They wanted you,” Cassian said after a long silence.
“No shit.”
“No,” he said, voice softer. “Not just to kill. To take. To... change.”
She turned to him. “Into what?”
He shook his head. “You’re not supernatural. But they think they can make you theirs. Mark you. Twist you.”
“I’m not so easy to bend.”
His eyes found hers.
“I know. That’s why they fear you.”
---
She moved closer to him, still shivering despite the layers.
“You think they’ll come again?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When it hurts the most.”
His words weren’t cruel.
Just true.
---
They sat in silence after that. The kind of silence that spoke volumes.
Then Elara asked, “If I’m not supernatural, not a wolf, not whatever they think—what am I in this world?”
Cassian looked at her, moonlight slicing across his jaw.
“You’re the only thing I’ve seen that made monsters hesitate.”
“Maybe that just makes me lucky.”
“No.” His voice was a rasp now. “That makes you powerful.”
She didn’t believe it.
But she wanted to.
---
The wind shifted.
Cassian’s nose twitched.
“They’re circling.”
She stiffened. “What do we do?”
His gaze met hers.
And this time, there was no hesitation.
“We stop running.”
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