Ashes Behind, Teeth Ahead
748 Words
Chapter Sixteen
Cassian didn’t speak at first.
He just packed.
Fast. Efficient. Quiet.
The kind of quiet Elara recognized—not calm, not focus.
Fear.
“What are we doing?” she asked, voice hoarse.
He didn’t look at her. “Leaving.”
“Because of what happened?”
“Because it’s not over.”
---
The charm around her neck pulsed again—slow, warm, steady. Like it knew something she didn’t.
“You said this place was sacred.”
“It was. Until tonight.” He shoved knives into his coat, a gun into the waistband of his jeans. “Now it’s compromised. Burned. Marked.”
“So where are we going?”
Cassian finally turned to her, eyes bleak.
“Somewhere they can’t follow.”
“You said they always follow.”
“I lied.”
---
They drove through dawn.
Elara stared out the window, arm bandaged, body sore, hair stiff with dried blood.
Cassian drove like the world was ending behind them.
Maybe it was.
“Who sent them?” she asked after an hour.
He exhaled. “I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea.”
He nodded.
She waited.
He said nothing more.
---
They passed through towns where the streets were too clean, the windows too dark.
People turned to look at them—and away again just as fast.
As if they knew. Or worse—felt it.
Cassian didn’t stop.
Not for gas.
Not for food.
Not even to breathe.
It wasn’t until the sun touched the edge of the horizon again that he pulled off onto an unmarked dirt path, barely wide enough for the car.
Elara sat forward. “Where are we?”
“Borderland. Between two packs. Neutral territory. No one owns it. No one protects it.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It’s not. That’s the point.”
---
They parked beneath a dead tree.
Beyond it, the woods changed again—denser, colder, wrong.
Cassian grabbed a duffel, slung it over his shoulder.
“We walk from here.”
“Walk where?”
“To the Glass Hollow.”
Elara paused. “You told me never to go near that place.”
“I know.”
“So why—?”
“Because we’re out of options.”
---
The Glass Hollow wasn’t really made of glass.
It was made of memory. Of reflection.
Cassian had explained once—when he’d still spoken softly in bed, after long nights of skin and breath—that the Hollow was where old wolves went to remember who they’d once been… and what they’d done to survive.
“Will we be safe there?”
“No,” he said. “But we won’t be seen. Not by the ones that bleed.”
---
Nightfall came fast.
The trees here didn’t make room for the sky. They pressed in, twisted around each other like bones broken wrong.
Elara’s skin prickled.
“Something’s watching.”
“I know.”
They didn’t stop.
Didn’t talk.
Just walked.
For hours.
The path narrowed, disappeared.
The charm around her neck was a brand now—hot against her chest.
Something shifted in the dark.
A sound.
Too smooth to be a footstep.
Too slow to be wind.
Cassian’s hand snapped out, grabbed hers.
“Don’t run,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“Because if you run, they know we’re prey.”
---
They kept moving.
Slow.
Steady.
Until, at last, the trees gave way.
The Hollow wasn’t what she expected.
No ruins.
No stones.
Just a circle of perfectly still water.
It reflected everything—trees, moon, clouds—but not them.
Cassian exhaled. “We’re safe. For now.”
Elara looked down—and for the first time in her life, saw no reflection.
“What is this place?”
He looked at her.
And for the first time since the attack… he looked tired.
“A graveyard. For wolves who died without dying.”
---
They made a fire that didn’t burn.
Elara curled in a blanket.
Cassian kept watch.
Around them, the woods whispered.
But they didn’t move.
Not here.
Not yet.
“When will they come?” she asked.
Cassian’s voice was gravel and grief. “When the moon turns black.”
“And what do we do until then?”
He turned to her.
“We get ready.”
She nodded once.
And whispered, “Then show me how to fight.”
- Writer
