Chapter 3
861 Words
The training was brutal.
It wasn’t physical, at least not at first. Eira focused on Aria’s instincts—forcing her to recognize the shifts in her senses, the surges of emotion that weren’t hers. Rage. Fear. Hunger.
“The wolf feeds on what you feel,” Eira explained. “It doesn’t think. It reacts. You must learn to separate yourself from the beast.”
They spent hours in silence, meditating, listening to the sounds of the forest. Aria learned to feel the breath of wind before it moved a branch. She could smell the soil, the sap, the heartbeat of a bird nesting above them.
She learned how to hold it in.
Then, Eira cut her palm.
And the wolf screamed.
Aria dropped to her knees, growling. Her fingers twitched into claws. Her vision blurred red. She wanted to tear, to devour.
Kael grabbed her, pressing her wounded palm into the earth.
“Anchor yourself,” he snapped. “Find your root. Breathe.”
She fought it. For what felt like hours.
And finally—she was still.
Sweating. Shaking. Human.
Barely.
Eira knelt beside her. “You’re strong. Stronger than they expected. That’s why they’re coming.”
Aria looked up. “Who?”
Kael answered, voice low. “The Fenris Circle.”
---
They returned to the house just before dark.
Aria was exhausted, her body aching, her mind a blur of instincts and half-formed emotions. But something was different.
She felt clearer.
The mark had stopped spreading.
Temporarily.
She collapsed on the couch, head pounding. Kael paced the room like a wolf trapped in a cage.
“You should rest,” he said.
That night, the wind changed.
Aria stood at her bedroom window, staring out at the tree line. The forest was silent—unnaturally so. No rustling leaves. No owls. Not even crickets.
The mark on her arm tingled. Not burning. Not painful. Just... alert. As if her blood knew something her mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
She turned away, but a flicker of movement stopped her cold.
There—between two trees.
A pair of eyes, glowing faintly red.
She blinked, and they were gone.
She backed away from the window slowly, heart thudding.
“Kael?” she called.
No answer.
She reached for her phone. No signal. Not unusual this far from town, but suddenly the dead screen felt ominous.
She opened the bedroom door.
And smelled it.
Not smoke. Not blood. Something worse.
Rotting fur.
---
Kael burst through the front door moments later, his coat torn and face slicked with sweat.
“Aria!”
She was already in the hallway, her body humming with adrenaline.
“They’re close,” she said. “I saw—something.”
Kael’s nostrils flared. “They’re here.”
He grabbed her hand. “We don’t have time to run. If they break the threshold—”
“What happens?”
“They’ll kill you before you shift.”
He dragged a heavy wooden chest from beneath the stairs and wrenched it open. Inside lay vials, salts, small bones etched with symbols, and two curved daggers.
“Protection wards,” he muttered. “Not strong enough for a full Fenris incursion, but maybe enough to hold them back for an hour.”
Aria’s stomach twisted. “An hour?”
Kael looked at her. “That’s all we need.”
He dropped the dagger into her hand. “If they get past me, you don’t hesitate. You fight.”
“I’m not ready.”
“You never are.”
---
Outside, the wind howled.
Kael slammed the front door shut and painted a thick circle of black powder across the floor. “Stay inside the circle unless I say otherwise.”
Aria nodded, her fingers tightening around the dagger. It felt both foreign and familiar in her hand. Like it had waited for her.
Kael moved like a blur, posting bones and salts at every window, whispering in a language she couldn’t understand. Her pulse thundered in her ears. The pressure behind her eyes built, her vision swimming.
Something was coming.
She felt it. Not just in her skin—but deeper. Beneath the surface of her soul.
And the wolf inside stirred.
---
The first strike came at the east window—glass shattered inward as something slammed into it with a wet, guttural snarl.
Kael whirled, flinging a salt vial toward the breach. A blinding light exploded, and a scream followed—inhuman, tortured.
Then a second hit. Then a third.
“Three of them,” Kael hissed. “At least.”
He tossed Aria another vial. “If one makes it in—throw, not swing. Got it?”
She nodded, sweat slicking her palms.
Then they came.
The front door exploded off its hinges.
A creature barrelled through—eight feet tall, its body a twisted mass of fur and claws, eyes glowing red with madness. Its mouth split open in a howl that shook the floorboards.
Kael met it mid-leap.
Flesh tore. Wood splintered. Kael moved like wind—precise, brutal.
Another creature crashed through the back, skidding into the circle of salt.
- Writer
