Lost As Wolves

The Hollows

Claire ran. Not from danger, but from knowing too much.

The glowing eyes in the alley haunted her still as she barrelled into her apartment, slamming the door behind her. Her wolf—quiet since Madam Vespera’s treatment—lay curled on the rug, tail twitching.

Claire leaned against the door, chest heaving. “Something followed me,” she whispered, unsure if she meant it literally or metaphorically. Black Hollow was changing, and the lines between what could be seen and what was real had grown dangerously thin.

Her phone blinked with a message from an unknown sender: Saw your request on the net. Can I sell my wolf to you?

She threw the device onto the couch.

The wolf situation wasn’t now. There were more important things.

The vial. She had forgotten about the vial.

Digging into her coat, she pulled out the glass container the old woman in the market had given her. The liquid still pulsed inside it, as if alive. She held it up to the light, mesmerized and unnerved.

“What are you?” she murmured.

The wolf stood up abruptly, ears alert. It padded over and sniffed the vial. Then, with a swift motion, it knocked the glass from her hand.

“No!” Claire cried as it shattered against the floor.

The thick, dark substance seeped into the wood, and the air changed. The walls groaned. Her wolf growled, not at her, but at something behind her.

Claire turned.

A ripple moved through the air—like heat—but it didn’t vanish. It held shape. It grew.

Then, a boy stood there. A boy with Ethan’s eyes.

“Claire?” he said, blinking, dazed. “Where am I?”

Her knees nearly buckled. “Ethan?”

He looked down at himself, then back up. “I was with her. I don’t know how I got out.”

Claire reached out, trembling. But before she could touch him, the boy flickered like a dying signal.

“I don’t have long,” he said. “She knows you’re close. That’s why she sent the message.”

“Who?”

“Sable’s sister. The Matriarch.”

The lights exploded.

Darkness swallowed the room. The air turned cold. Claire screamed his name, but the boy was gone.

And in his place stood something else.

Not a person. Not a wolf. A silhouette that pulsed with the same heartbeat as the vial.

The wolf leapt at it, but it vanished on contact. It reappeared seated on a sofa.

Claire backed away, heart racing. Her door creaked open by itself.

The figure moved forward.

Then stopped. Spoke.

“Black Hollow remembers you.”

It disappeared completely, this time.

Claire fell to her knees, alone in the wreckage of her home, the taste of otherworldly air in her lungs.

Outside, the moon shifted.

And in the woods, wolves howled—none of them hers.

***

Holt parked his patrol car outside an old radio tower. Static whispered through his earpiece—Vespera’s office feed had gone dead.

He hadn’t told anyone he’d bugged her. Not even Claire. Especially not Claire. His guilt chewed at him, but his gut screamed louder: Claire was in danger.

He stepped out into the night, rifle slung over his shoulder, flashlight clipped to his jacket. The tower loomed above him like a skeletal sentinel. Crows scattered as he approached the rusted door.

Inside, the air smelled like burnt wires and mildew. Every step creaked. The second floor had been converted into a meeting room—or something like it. Ritual symbols stained the concrete.

In the center, a large map of Black Hollow, marked with pins, strings, and blood.

He recognized Claire’s apartment circled in red.

He barely had time to register it when someone moved behind him.

“Didn’t think you’d make it this far,” said a voice—low, female, familiar.

He spun around. “You.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Officer Holt. You’re not the only one who can play spy.”

It was the woman from the bone stall. But her eyes weren’t cloudy tonight—they burned with gold.

She stepped into the dim light. “Sable sent you a gift. Claire opened it. Now the Hollow is waking up.”

“What do you mean? What is this?” Holt demanded.

“A reckoning,” she said simply.

Something moved in the corner. Not footsteps. Not breath. Just presence.

The woman smiled. “Go home, Holt. Protect her, if you still can. But you’ll have to choose who she becomes.”

Then she vanished into shadow.

The lights in the tower blew out. Holt was alone.

But he didn’t feel alone.

Not anymore.

He bolted from the tower, keys trembling in his hands, thoughts racing. Claire had been right.

Too right. And whatever was coming—they were already too late to stop it.

But maybe not too late to survive it.

He turned the ignition. The engine roared. And he drove.

Back to her.

Back to the Hollow.

***

Madam Vespera stood motionless in her study, one hand resting on the edge of her oak desk, the other pressed to her temple.

A hum—low, foreign, almost imperceptible—had started an hour ago. It hadn’t stopped.

Her wolf, a towering shadow with blue-black fur and silver eyes, prowled the perimeter of the room. She sniffed every corner, every vent, every object.

Then she froze.

With a growl, the wolf leapt onto the wall-mounted bookcase and clawed behind a false panel.

Wires. Metal. A listening device.

Vespera’s lips curled. “So, someone’s been eavesdropping.”

She picked up the bug and examined it under the light, her mind already racing through names. Holt. Or worse—Sable’s people.

“Burn it,” she said to the wolf.

She obeyed, mouth glowing with eerie blue flame, reducing the device to ash.

But Vespera didn’t relax. She crossed to her cabinet, retrieved a crystal filled with a swirling mist, and whispered something in a language long dead.

The mist turned crimson.

“They’ve released him,” she murmured. “Claire. What have you done?”

Her wolf whimpered.

And outside, in the quiet stillness of the Hollow, the ground trembled.