Episode five
750 Words
Chapter Five – Blood and Bone
Kael hadn’t spoken since they reached the abandoned barn on the edge of Raven Hollow.
It looked like nothing—a half-collapsed roof, splintered doors, the smell of damp straw and old wood. But beneath it was something else. A cellar. Reinforced. Locked with a bolt that looked military-grade.
Lena opened it with a four-digit code and stepped back. “In.”
He hesitated.
She gave him a look. Not unkind, but sharp. “You want answers? Earn them.”
The stairs creaked under his weight as he descended. The air below was cool and dry. Concrete walls, steel restraints bolted to the ground, a drain in the center of the floor.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what this was.
“A cage,” Kael said.
Lena nodded. “Safe room. For when you lose control.”
“You think I’m going to turn.”
She shrugged. “I think you already have. You just don’t know how deep it goes.”
Kael swallowed. His mouth tasted like ash.
He walked the perimeter slowly. There were scratches in the wall. Deep ones. Old. From someone—or something—that hadn’t wanted to be locked in.
Or hadn’t stayed that way.
“You brought others here,” he said.
“Three,” Lena replied. “One’s dead. One disappeared. One… I had to kill.”
Silence stretched between them like a wire.
“And me?”
Lena didn’t answer. Instead, she handed him something—leather-bound, thick, pages edged with grime.
“A journal?”
“Your mother’s,” she said.
Kael froze.
“She was part of a local coven. Old magic. She tried to keep it from you. But the curse… It’s not something you can bottle forever.”
He sat down hard on a wooden bench, flipping through the pages. Symbols. Drawings. Herbs. Full moons circled in red. Entries in shaky handwriting:
He’s getting stronger. The dreams are back. The blood doesn’t come from nowhere.
I have to keep him locked away again. He’ll hate me. But he won’t remember.
If the hunters find him, they’ll kill him. They have no mercy left.
Kael’s fingers shook as he turned another page. A drawing of a wolf. Its eyes looked too human.
He looked up. “Why are you helping me?”
Lena leaned against the wall. “I’m not.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
She met his gaze. “I’m not here to save you, Kael. I’m here to see if you’re worth saving.”
Something about the way she said it—cool, detached—made his blood chill.
“What if I’m not?”
“Then I put you down clean. Before you kill anyone else.”
The words were sharp, but her voice was calm. Like she wasn’t bluffing.
And Kael believed her.
They trained for hours.
First, control. Breathing. Meditation. Learning to feel when the hunger began.
Lena pressed a palm to his chest. “You’ll feel it here first. Like fire in the blood.”
“It’s already there,” he muttered.
She nodded. “Then you’re closer than I thought.”
Next, resistance. She threw vials of blood near him. Set traps to trigger the shift. Forced him to hold silver until his palms blistered.
“You have to build tolerance,” she said. “Pain is a signal. Use it. Don’t run from it.”
By nightfall, Kael was shaking. Muscles cramping. Eyes flashing gold at the edges.
“Stop,” he panted. “I can’t—”
“You can,” Lena snapped. “Or someone dies next full moon.”
He snarled. It rose in his throat without warning—too deep, too primal. He slammed his fist into the wall. The concrete cracked.
Lena didn’t flinch. Just watched him. Calculating.
Kael backed away. “You’re trying to break me.”
She crossed her arms. “No. I’m trying to see if you’ve already broken.”
That night, Kael lay on a cot in the corner, staring at the ceiling. His muscles burned. His skin buzzed. The hunger was quieter, but not gone.
He thought about the journal. About his mother’s hands, trembling as she wrote.
He thought about Lena’s eyes—how they’d gone cold the second he lost control.
He wasn’t a killer. He refused to be.
But something inside him wanted to be.
And he didn’t know how much longer he could hold it back.
- Writer
