into the hollow woods
660 Words
Chapter 12 – Into the Hollow Woods
The academy gates groaned open under moonlight, and Mira stepped through them for the first time in years without chains, guards, or fear clutching her throat. Kade walked beside her, his hand brushing hers with every stride.
“You sure this isn’t a trap?” she asked, eyes scanning the towering trees ahead — the Hollow Woods, forbidden to students, whispered about in stories too bloody to be fiction.
“I told Varya we needed a break after the trial,” Kade muttered. “She owes us that much.”
“Right. A romantic stroll through the cursed forest,” she said dryly.
He smirked. “Don’t pretend you’re not into it.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t deny it.
The forest greeted them with silence — not peaceful silence, but the heavy kind, like even the wind was afraid to speak. Trees leaned in too close, their trunks twisted like they were trying to escape something buried beneath the roots.
Still, Mira breathed in the air. Freedom. Danger. Power.
She felt alive.
⸻
An hour in, they reached a broken stone arch covered in ivy. A shrine, long abandoned. Kade lit a small flame from his palm and glanced around.
“Place gives me the creeps,” he muttered.
“That’s because something’s watching us,” Mira said.
And it was.
Eyes.
All around.
She felt them — not wolves. Not even cursed ones.
Older.
⸻
She pulled Kade behind the ruins. “Don’t move,” she whispered.
A branch snapped.
Then another.
A shadow darted across the path — tall, hunched, with antlers that scraped the canopy.
Kade’s wolf surged inside him, snarling. Mira pressed her fingers to the cursed mark on her forearm, trying to silence the flare of heat that erupted in response.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” she said.
But she lied.
She did know.
Because the same creature had appeared in her dreams for years — standing over her crib, whispering secrets in a tongue she wasn’t supposed to remember.
It was called a Nightborn — a remnant of the ancient war, born of chaos and blood magic, nearly extinct… except for the ones that had sworn loyalty to her mother.
And now, it bowed before her.
Kade tensed beside her. “It’s not attacking.”
Mira stepped forward slowly.
The Nightborn raised a bony hand and dropped something into the grass — a torn piece of silk embroidered with the Thornveil crest… and soaked in blood.
Mira knelt.
It wasn’t her blood.
It wasn’t Kade’s.
It was her step-sister’s.
⸻
Later, by a dying campfire, Mira sat silent as Kade cleaned the silk and held it up to the flame.
“She went into the forest alone?” he asked.
“She must’ve followed me. She’s obsessed. She hates me.”
“Enough to die out here?”
Mira’s jaw clenched. “She wouldn’t be the first to try.”
He looked at her with something close to pride — and something darker.
“You scared, Thornveil?”
Mira looked into the woods.
“I’m hungry.”
He smirked. “For revenge?”
“No,” she said, turning to him.
“For you.”
⸻
The fire flared higher as she straddled him, her lips brushing his, slow, teasing, until he groaned into her mouth. Her nails dragged down his chest, claws barely held back. Their bond pulsed with every heartbeat, every breath.
He grabbed her hips, growling as she moved against him. The forest didn’t matter. The blood didn’t matter. The war waiting back at the academy didn’t matter.
Only this.
Only her.
Mira whispered in his ear, voice thick with need, “I want you to ruin me.”
He smirked darkly.
“Too late.”
⸻
Far beyond the firelight, the Nightborn watched… and smiled.
The mating had begun.
But so had the curse.
- Writer
