WHAT HUNTS IN THE DARK
800 Words
They ran for twenty minutes without speaking.
Ezra was fast for someone who wasn’t a wolf. He moved through the trees like he knew them, ducking branches without looking, changing direction twice without explanation. Seraphine kept pace, her lungs burning, the silver light pulsing under her skin in rhythm with her heartbeat.
She couldn’t turn it off.
It was like trying to stop bleeding with a wish.
Here. Ezra dropped into a crouch behind a collapsed oak, pulling her down with him. His hand on her wrist was firm and warm and gone the moment she was low enough.
She pressed her back against the rotting wood and focused on breathing quietly.
The howl came again. Closer.
But wrong. The pitch was wrong, too deep, with something underneath it that scraped against her ears like metal on stone. No wolf in Blackmoor pack sounded like that. She knew every one of Darian’s trackers by their shift signature.
This wasn’t Darian’s.
What is that, she breathed.
Ezra’s jaw was tight. Something that was already looking for you before tonight.
She turned to stare at him. What.
Oracles don’t just appear, Seraphine. He said her name like he’d known it already, which sent a cold thread of unease down her spine. Your power has been building for months. Leaking at the edges. There are things older than pack law that track that kind of leak the way wolves track blood.
You knew. The words came out flat. Dangerous. You knew this was coming and you were just watching.
I was getting close enough to reach you first. His amber eyes cut to hers. Direct. Unapologetic. Would you have believed me three months ago? A stranger telling you that you were something rare and hunted.
She thought about three months ago. Darian’s cold back in their bed. The pack whispering about Lyra Ashwood’s pure bloodline. Seraphine managing schedules and territory disputes and pretending not to notice her own marriage dissolving around her like sugar in rain.
No, she admitted.
Then we move forward from now.
The howl split the night again and this time it was accompanied by something that made her stomach drop completely. A sound beneath the howl, almost like words. Almost like her name.
The silver light exploded up both her arms to the elbow.
You need to control that, Ezra said sharply.
I’m trying.
Try harder. You’re a beacon right now.
I don’t know how. She pressed her glowing hands against her thighs, jaw clenched. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Two hours ago I was signing divorce papers and now something is howling my name in the dark and my hands won’t stop.
He reached over and covered both her hands with his.
The silver light dimmed.
Not completely. But enough.
She looked up at him, startled. His face was very close in the dark, close enough that she could see the fine details of that scar, the careful steadiness in his eyes. The warmth of his hands over hers was steady and deliberate and she felt it move up her arms in a way that had nothing to do with power.
How did you do that, she whispered.
I’ve spent eleven years learning what you are. His voice was low. Private. The kind of voice that only existed in small spaces between people. I know how it works even if you don’t yet.
Something shifted in the air between them.
She pulled her hands back.
Don’t, she said quietly. Not angry. Just clear.
He moved back without argument, which she respected more than she expected to.
We need to reach the eastern road before it finds our trail. He was already scanning the treeline. There’s a safe house forty minutes out.
And if it cuts us off.
His hand moved to the inside of his jacket. What he pulled out was not a weapon she recognized. A slim dark rod etched with the same symbols currently burning under her skin.
Her breath caught.
Where did you get that, she said.
From the last Oracle. He met her eyes. She gave it to me right before they killed her.
The howl came a third time.
No distance between them now.
It was in the trees to their left.
Ezra rose into a low crouch. We run on three.
Seraphine’s power surged up her spine, hot and terrified and enormous, and for one single second she saw it again. The vision. The silver-haired man in the burned clearing, closer this time, his mouth forming words she almost caught.
Find the first territory.
Three, Ezra said.
They ran.
Behind them something stepped out of the trees. Heavy. Patient.
It didn’t run after them.
It didn’t need to.
It already knew where they were going.
- Writer
