The First Howl

CHAPTER THREE:THE MEMORY RETURNS

That night, the dreams came.

But they weren’t dreams.They were memories.

He was running through the trees, faster than he’d ever moved before. His muscles burned with

power. His senses were sharp—he could hear the flutter of bat wings in the canopy above and

smell the warm blood of a deer a mile away.

And then came the hunger. The need to chase. To tear.

He woke up soaked in sweat, mouth dry, nails digging into the mattress.

The moon was full again tonight.

And something inside him was stirring.

He stumbled to the shed behind the house. His father’s old journal was hidden under a false

floorboard, inside a weatherproof box.

Elias had read pieces of it before—cryptic notes, strange warnings. It had always seemed like

the ramblings of a paranoid man.

But now?

He flipped to the marked page: “The Bloodline Holds.

”

“They will come for him when the howl calls out. He must never answer. The curse

awakens under the blood moon. If he turns, he must be hidden. Or killed.”

He must never answer.

But Elias already had.

That night, the dreams came.

But they weren’t dreams.

They were memories.

He was running through the trees, faster than he’d ever moved before. His muscles burned with power. His senses were sharp—he could hear the flutter of bat wings in the canopy above, feel the vibration of small feet scurrying across the forest floor, and smell the warm blood of a deer a mile away.

And then came the hunger. The need to chase. To tear.

He saw flashes—moonlight on wet fur, snarling teeth, the taste of blood, the sound of screams.

Elias woke up soaked in sweat, mouth dry, nails dug into the mattress so hard they’d left deep gouges in the foam. His breath came in short bursts. His hoodie clung to his skin, damp and suffocating.

The moon was full again tonight.

And something inside him was stirring.

He sat up slowly, afraid to move too fast, like his body might betray him if he didn’t treat it carefully. There was a hum in his blood. A tension in his bones, like a wire pulled too tight.

He got dressed, threw on boots without socks, and stumbled outside into the cold.

The shed behind the house hadn’t been opened in months. The hinges groaned like they didn’t want to remember what was inside. He stepped in, pulled the string to turn on the overhead bulb, and made his way to the back corner. The floorboard came up with a pry bar. Underneath: a waterproof metal box.

His father’s journal.

It was thick, worn, edges curled with age and damp. The leather cover was cracked but still strong, like it had been built to survive generations.

He opened to the marked page. His father had underlined the passage three times.

“The Bloodline Holds.”

“They will come for him when the howl calls out. He must never answer. The curse awakens under the blood moon. If he turns, he must be hidden. Or killed.”

Elias stared at the words, heart pounding. He’d always thought the journal was the final descent of a broken man—just the nonsense of a father who’d lived too long in fear.

But now?

Now it read like prophecy.

He ran a hand through his hair, then flipped through the other pages. Diagrams of the human nervous system. Maps of ley lines. Hand-drawn sketches of creatures that weren’t quite wolves, and definitely weren’t men. He found one page tucked near the back—a hand-drawn copy of the same crescent symbol the strangers had carried into the store. Underneath it, a single word: Wardens.

So they’d been tracking this for longer than Elias had known.

He must never answer.

But Elias already had. The moment he let the hunger rise. The moment he chased, even in his dreams.

It wasn’t just the full moon. It wasn’t just instinct. It was something older. Something buried in his blood like a seed waiting for the right season to sprout.

Outside, the wind howled across the ridge. It didn’t sound natural. It sounded… intentional.

Elias closed the journal and sat back against the wall of the shed, heart racing, the weight of it all finally pressing down. He had thought he could live quiet. Stay small. Ignore what he was.

But the truth was clawing its way out now.

And Graypine wouldn’t survive if he got it wrong.