chapter 2
916 Words
CHAPTER TWO
I stayed inside for two days.
My father told me I didn’t have to go anywhere. He said it once, then again later, like he thought I might forget. I didn’t argue, I just nodde.I barely spoke. I stayed upstairs, sleeping at strange hours, lying awake when I should have been exhausted.
Time didn’t move the way it was supposed to.
Sometimes I thought I heard my mother’s voice soft, distant, calling my name the way she used to when dinner was ready. Other times, I forgot she was gone altogether. The realization always came back hard, like walking into a wall you didn’t see coming.
On the third morning, my father knocked.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
I sat up slowly. “Okay.”
He didn’t come all the way in. He stayed by the door, hands shoved into his pockets, eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder.
“You don’t need to rush anything,” he said. “School can wait. But we should get you registered.”
I nodded. Deciding things felt heavier than agreeing to them.
Redwood Ridge looked different in daylight.
Smaller. Quieter. People waved as we drove past, even when they clearly didn’t recognize us. Some of them stared a little too long. My father noticed.
“Small town,” he said. “They’re curious.”
That wasn’t what it felt like.
The school sat close to the trees too close. The forest pressed up behind the building like it had claimed the land first and never fully let it go.
My father parked. “Wait here.”
I didn’t.
Inside, the lobby smelled like paper and disinfectant. The woman at the desk looked up and smiled, quick and practiced.
“You must be Marcus’s daughter.”
My shoulders tightened. “Yes.”
“We’ve been expecting you.”
I looked at my father. He gave nothing away.
He took the folder she handed him and steered me back outside without saying another word.
“They already knew my name,” I said once we were back in the car.
“People talk,” he replied.
It wasn’t an answer. Not really.
The forest followed us home, lining the road on both sides. Even in the afternoon light, shadows pooled thick between the trees.
“Why can’t I go in there?” I asked.
He kept his eyes on the road. “It isn’t safe.”
“From what?”
“Just trust me.”
The words landed wrong. Like a warning disguised as reassurance.
That night, I sat on my bed scrolling through old messages. I stopped at one from my mother no words, just a photo of the ocean. Blue stretching endlessly into grey.
I understood it now. Or maybe I just wanted to.
Later, I heard it again.
Low. Steady.
Not the wind.
I held my breath, listening. It came a second time, closer than before, and something in my chest tightened. I waited for my father to come check on me.
He didn’t.
When I opened my door, his room was empty.
He came back just before dawn. Mud on his shoes. Dirt under his nails. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
He made coffee like everything was normal.
The next morning, he told me I’d start school the following week.
“I’ll drive you,” he said.
“I can walk.”
“No.”
That was the end of it.
That afternoon, I stepped onto the porch for air. The forest was still not peaceful, just alert. Like it was paying attention.
A black truck slowed as it passed.
The driver glanced over.
His eyes lingered. Not openly. Not politely either.
Then he was gone.
I stayed there long after the road emptied, the quiet pressing in around me.
For the first time since arriving in Redwood Ridge, I understood one thing clearly:
I wasn’t invisible here.
Damien pov
Damien knew Marcus’s daughter was coming.
He told himself he didn’t care as he took the longer road home, the one that curved along the edge of the forest. It was habit, he needed to know everything that came in to the pack,it was duty .Nothing more.
Then he saw her.
She stood on the porch like she hadn’t decided where she belonged. Arms loose. Shoulders tired and too still for someone her age.
He kept his eyes on her longer than he meant to.
When she looked up, he caught the color of them blue, but broken by grey. Not bright. Not soft. The kind of eyes that stayed with you for reasons you couldn’t name.
His wolf stirred.
Enough.
He tightened his grip on the wheel and kept driving. Didn’t slow down. Didn’t look back. Pretended the tension in his chest was nothing.
He drove past.
It should have ended there.
It didn’t.
The restlessness followed him all the way home. He turned the radio up, then shut it off again. Nothing drowned it out.
By the time he reached the ridge, his jaw ached from clenching. He pulled over, staring ahead, breathing through the pull that didn’t make sense.
“This is stupid,” he muttered.
His wolf didn’t agree.
It wasn’t anger. Or hunger.
It was recognition.
Damien started the truck again and drove on, refusing to look back down the road.
But he already knew the truth.
Whatever had shifted in Redwood Ridge, it had started the moment she stepped onto that porch.
And it wasn’t finished yet.
- Writer
