BLOOD OF THE FORGOTTEN

Chapter Five: The wolf’s voice

Selene woke up with a cry.

The sound tore from her throat before she knew she was breathing. Her body jolted upright, slick with sweat despite the winter air. She pressed her palm to her chest, her heart hammering as though trying to break free.

For a moment, she thought she was still in the fever dream, still trapped beneath fire and visions. But she wasn’t. She was lying in her narrow bed, the pale light of morning spilling through the shuttered window. Her sheets were tangled, damp with sweat, and the wound in her shoulder burned like a brand.

Selene exhaled, trembling. It was over. It had to be.

Then she heard it.

Mine.

The voice was not a whisper in her fever this time. It was alive. Inside her.

Selene froze, every muscle in her body locking tight. Her eyes darted around the small room, to the door, to the corners where shadows lingered. Empty. The house was silent. Her mother and father were likely downstairs, pretending she did not exist, pretending she had not screamed in the night.

But she knew she wasn’t alone.

The voice moved through her veins like smoke. Low, predatory, resonant, vibrating beneath her skin.

Do not fight me. You cannot. You are mine.

Selene’s breath came fast. “No,” she whispered, barely sounding. Her throat tightened. “You’re not real.”

A low chuckle shivered inside her bones.

I am older than this town. Older than your blood. I am what they tried to kill in you. And now, I live again.

She pressed her palms to her ears, desperate to block it out, but the sound was within her. No barrier could shut it out. Her body betrayed her, the pulse in her neck quickened, her senses sharpened until she could hear the faint scrape of her father’s chair below, the drip of water from the roof, the flutter of a sparrow’s wings outside the window. Everything is too loud. Too vivid. Too alive.

She shook her head. “Get out of me.”

The voice deepened, a growl that curled with possession.

There is no out. You are mine, Selene.

The use of her name chilled her more than the winter air. She gasped, stumbling from her bed. Her legs trembled but she carried her to the window. She threw it open, desperate for air, desperate to feel the cold bite her skin.

The forest lay beyond, silent, waiting. The ruins were out there. The place where she had bled.

It calls to you, the wolf whispered, softer now, coaxing. The trees. The shadows. The hunt. Do you feel it? Hunger?

And she did. That was the worst part.

Her stomach knotted, not with pain, but with craving. Her teeth ached. Her nails dug too easily into the wood of the window, splintering it. She jerked her hand back, staring at the grooves she had left. Human nails should not have done that.

She shook her head. “No, no, I’m not like you. I’m not”

You are exactly like me. We are one.

Selene clutched her chest, tears stinging her eyes. She thought of the vision, the flames, the worship, the blood moon. She thought of her mother’s distant eyes, the way her voice had cracked with cold warning every time she told Selene to stay away from the forest.

Had she known this would happen? Had she always known?

Her breath shuddered. She was shaking so hard she almost didn’t hear the floorboard creak outside her door. A pause. Then the faint rustle of skirts moving away down the hall.

Her mother. Listening.

Selene’s blood went cold.

The wolf inside her purred.

They fear you already.

She pressed her back against the wall, curling her arms around herself. For the first time in her life, she understood the silence of Blackthorn. Why does no one speak of the Forgotten? Why did her family never touch her?

It wasn’t superstition.

It was true.

And she was living it.