chapter 2
850 Words
Chapter Two: Ayla’s Truth
The bullet was meant to scare him.
Instead, it had shown her something far more terrifying—he wasn’t afraid. Not of death. Not of pain. Not even of her.
Ayla Monroe sat at the edge of her bathtub, scrubbing the dried blood from her arm. Her coat was ruined. The gash beneath the sleeve had already started healing, though it wasn’t supposed to. Not that fast.
She stared at it in the mirror.
“I didn’t even feel it happen…”
The same words she’d whispered three months ago, when she fell off a rooftop chasing a trafficker. She should’ve shattered her leg. But by morning, she’d walked out with only a bruise.
She kept telling herself it was adrenaline. Luck. Maybe her blood pressure was abnormal. Maybe her nerves were duller than most.
But then she saw him shift.
And something inside her had howled back.
By day, Ayla worked as a stringer for the Raven Hollow Journal. She dug into cold cases, corruption, and street crime—nothing flashy. But for two years she’d been secretly investigating the city's coldest myth: the “wolves of Hollow Hill.”
Animal attacks. Full moon disappearances. Bite wounds no dog could make.
The official reports always disappeared.
She had followed the trail from alley corpses to burned-out warehouses, from death certificates with missing organs to untraceable blood samples. And it had all led her to the Glenrow woods two nights ago.
She never expected to find him.
She opened her laptop now, dripping water onto the keys as she typed up the incident:
Possible shifter sighting. Male. Height approx. 6'2". Golden eyes. Unregistered. Extremely fast regenerative ability. Name: Riven Thorne.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. That name. It had history. Violence.
She’d only heard it once—from her mentor, Dax Harlow, a former hunter turned drunk. Before he vanished, Dax warned her of three things:
Never trust a wolf with golden eyes.
The Thorne bloodline was cursed.
And Raven Hollow was built on a m******e no one wanted to remember.
Ayla clicked open a file marked “Obsidian Archive.” A private database she’d built over the years, pulling data from old news clippings, underground reports, and recordings stolen from corrupted city servers.
She typed in: Thorne m******e.
Only one result.
Pack wiped out in 2011. Rural land fire. Official cause: arson. Unidentified remains: 9. Surviving members: None confirmed.
Until now.
“Riven,” she whispered. “Why come back?”
There was more going on. She felt it in her gut. His words replayed in her mind: ‘War is coming. And you pulled me into it.’
She open a drawer and brought out a notebook. Inside were names—hunters, victims, suspected shifters. At the top of the second page was a name underlined three times:
Cassian Blackmoor.
Ayla didn’t know what scared her more—Riven’s name rising from the ashes, or Cassian Blackmoor’s name still floating like a shadow above it all.
She had her mother’s necklace hanging from her neck. A crescent moon carved into obsidian, warm against her skin. It was the only thing left after her parents’ deaths.
Deaths she’d been told were a “car accident.”
But she’d seen the claw marks on the dashboard.
Later that night, Ayla stood in the narrow hallway of a run-down apartment building in the old district. Room 406. She knocked twice.
The door opened a c***k. A man peeked out, yellow-stained beard, twitchy fingers.
“Monroe?” he rasped.
“Wren. I need information.”
He let her in.
The room reeked of whiskey and garlic. A crossbow leaned against the window. Charms hung from the ceiling like dead moths.
“Got a name?”
“Riven Thorne.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “Dead.”
“Not anymore.”
He grabbed a folder, rifled through pages. “Half-blood healer pack. Rumors say they tried to defy the Alpha laws. Blackmoors burned them. Alpha Cassian made it a lesson.”
“Why?”
“Power consolidation. The Thornes refused to fight in the Wolf Wars. Said healing was sacred. Made 'em look weak.”
“He’s alive.”
“Then he’s dangerous,” Wren said. “Those that survive fire don’t come back normal.”
Ayla looked out the window, feeling eyes in the darkness.
“Tell me about the Blackmoors.”
“They own everything. Police, law firms, even hospitals. But something’s shifted. Word on the street is Cassian’s losing control. Other packs are watching.”
“Watching for what?”
“Blood,” Wren said simply.
That night, Ayla couldn’t sleep.
She lay on the couch with a gun on the table and Riven’s name on her lips. The connection between her past and his was too strong. Too close. She needed answers. Needed to know why her blood didn’t feel fully human. Why she could smell him before she saw him. Why she healed too fast.
She dreamed of fire. Of a boy with golden eyes dragging her from the wreckage.
And she woke up crying.
- Writer
