Chapter 6 : Blood in the Pines
502 Words
The forest was restless.
Branches snapped under unseen weight. Birds took flight without warning. And somewhere in the dark, something breathed too heavily—too close.
Liam felt it the moment he stepped into the treeline. The air had changed. The rogues weren’t hiding anymore.
They were hunting.
He moved in silence, his senses sharpened—ears tuned to the faintest crackle of leaves, eyes scanning for movement. A deep growl rumbled through the trees behind him. He stopped, turned slowly.
Nothing.
But the stench lingered. Wet fur. Rotting meat. Rage.
He wasn’t alone.
Miles away, the first scream tore through Pine Hollow.
It came from the northern edge, near Miller’s farm. A place too far from town and too close to the wild.
By the time Liam reached it, the scent of blood clung to the fog.
The barn doors hung open. Inside: chaos. Hay scattered, boards splintered. Claw marks gouged into the walls. And in the center of it all, one of the horses—dead. Torn open. Unnatural.
But no people. No bodies.
That was the message.
He turned sharply, catching the faint echo of padded footsteps vanishing into the woods.
They're watching me.
He didn’t need to see them to know they were circling. Testing his boundaries. Pushing him to react. They wanted a fight. Or worse—wanted him to break his own leash and join them.
And Clara—
He spun back toward town, faster now. If they were sending a warning, she was the target they’d use to drive the point home.
---
Back at Liam’s cabin, Clara couldn’t sleep.
The silence was too loud, broken only by the wind tapping against the window like a cold hand.
She wandered through the room, taking in the details. The canvases. The sketches. Half-finished portraits of wolves and moons and faces that looked too human to be beasts, and too beastly to be human.
On a low shelf, she found a stack of old journals bound in dark leather. She hesitated—then opened one.
> October 14th.
I lost control again. I don’t remember what I did—but the blood under my fingernails told the story. I buried it under the sycamore roots. I hope no one finds it.
Her breath caught.
Footsteps.
Not outside. Inside.
Slow. Deliberate. Heavy.
She grabbed the nearest object—a fire poker—and held her breath.
“Liam?” she whispered.
No answer.
Then—
The door burst open.
Not Liam.
A man stood in the doorway, tall and ragged, with eyes too bright to be human and a grin too wide to be sane. Behind him, two more figures, silhouettes barely contained by their skin.
Rogues.
“Evening, darling,” the first one growled, voice like gravel soaked in blood. “We’ve heard so much about you.”
Clara backed away.
Then—crash.
A black shape launched through the open window, snarling with inhuman fury.
Liam.
But not the man she knew.
The wolf had come.
- Writer
