Chapter8
886 Words
I know I shouldn’t still be checking it.
I know this the same way I know a lot of things I do anyway.
I’ve deleted the app twice and downloaded it again within forty-eight hours.
I’ll stop when it stops meaning something to see familiar names in the thread titles, familiar arguments about territory and rank and the upcoming Alpha succession that everyone has been pretending is still a question when it’s been settled for years.
I know it’s not about the news. But about being cast out.
Being logged in is the only way I’m still technically in the room.
Twenty-three nights since the Verification and I am in my east-facing room at Mira’s house at 11pm with my laptop open and the
Ashvale pack forum loaded and my cursor hovering over the latest thread list.
I’m not going to engage.
I never engage. I just read. Observe. Stay in the room without being seen in it, which is something I’ve always been good at.
I scroll.
Most of it is mundane.
Territory maintenance updates.
A dispute about the western run boundary that’s been going since October.
Someone asking about the schedule for the winter formal.
I read these things absentmindedly.
Then I see the thread.
It’s in the security subforum, which is permission-restricted — I shouldn’t technically have access anymore, cast-out members get their forum permissions stripped as part of the exit protocol.
Except nobody actually stripped mine, which is either an oversight or something else, and I’ve been careful not to examine which, because examining it might make someone notice.
The thread title is:
HOLLOW ACTIVITY IN ASHVALE BORDER. URGENT.
I click it without thinking.
The first post is from Dex Orin, who is Caden’s second and who posts in the security subforum the way people post things they want documented but don’t want to discuss directly.
His post is seven lines.
“Border patrol found a body at the northeast marker.
Wolf, male, early twenties, not Ashvale, not ID’d. Cause of death: silver exposure.
No evidence of struggle — restrained.
Time of death: approximately 0300 hours.
The following was carved into the ground beside the body:
GIVE US THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN BLOOD.
All patrol units at increased frequency effective immediately.
Any sightings of unaffiliated wolves in territory report directly to Alpha.”
I read it twice.
Then a third time, slowly, the way you read something when your brain is trying to tell you that you missed or misunderstood something and need the words to land before you know what to do with them.
The girl with the golden blood.
I look at my hands.
I look at the screen.
Then look at my hands again.
I think about the bathroom mirror at 3am.
The gold in my eyes that shouldn’t be.
Eleven minutes before it faded.
I think about what Roman said “Aurum Primalis” and the way he said it like it was something I should already know about myself.
I think about the redacted records Elias slid across the English desk, the black ink that was clearly recent, someone covering something recently because something recently needed to be covered.
A man is dead on the Ashvale border.
And they’re looking for someone.
The girl with the golden blood is a description that fits me in a way I cannot excuse as coincidence anymore.
I close the forum and my laptop.
And sit in the dark of my room and I listen to the house — Mira breathing at the other end of the hall, the settling sounds of old wood, the street outside going quiet as the neighborhood sleeps.
I am not afraid.
I have read the post and fully processed what it means.
I am not calm either.
It just feels like everything that has happened in the last twenty-three days finally makes sense and I now know which direction to face.
Someone is looking for me.
They don’t know my name yet, or they would have used it.
They know what I am — or what’s in my blood, which is different from knowing me.
They know enough to be killing people on pack borders with messages, which means they have resources and patience and they have been building toward something bigger for longer than twenty-three days.
I get my journal and write:
HOLLOW ACTIVITY IN ASHVALE BORDER.
Dead wolf.
Carved message.
Girl with the Golden blood.
This is not a coincidence.
I need more information and I need it before they find me.
I close the journal and set my alarm for 5am — Coach Marsh’s extra sessions, which I’ve been doing every morning this week because running is the only thing that makes my body stop arguing with my brain.
I lie down but don’t sleep for a long time.
When I do, I don’t dream about the clearing.
I dream about something else — a sound, low and resonant, like a note played at a frequency just below hearing.
I dream about my own blood as light. I dream about five threads, thin as wire, leading somewhere I can’t see.
I wake up before the alarm.
The dream is already fading into the recesses of my mind. I don’t want to let it go.
I get my shoes.
I go run.
- Writer
