Chapter 15 : Between Fang and Flame Clara
270 Words
By the time she reached the stone door, the forest was silent.
Not the kind of silence that soothes. The kind that listens.
Moss had grown over her boots. The trees behind her had vanished into mist. She wasn’t sure if she’d crossed a boundary or been swallowed whole. But Liam’s scent was here. Strong. Sharp.
And something else.
A musk that didn’t belong to any living wolf.
She laid her palm on the stone.
Still warm.
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Liam
The door opened when he stopped asking it to.
Not with a creak, but a shiver. Like a breath exhaled from the lungs of the earth itself.
Behind it: a tunnel, low and pulsing with red light. Not fire—memory. The walls were carved with runes he didn’t recognize but felt deep in his bones. His wolf was quiet now. Not afraid. Not angry.
Listening.
And then he heard her.
Clara.
Not her voice. Her heartbeat.
Steady. Strong. Close.
He turned—and there she was.
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Clara
He was different.
Not monstrous. Not broken. But… older, somehow. His eyes had gone golden even in human form, and the air around him hummed like metal near lightning.
She didn’t speak.
She stepped forward.
He opened his arms.
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Together
The kiss wasn’t soft. It tasted like ash and blood and too many nights apart. But it anchored them. In that moment, beneath stone and silence and stories older than gods, they remembered who they were.
And who they would have to become.
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Aboveground, something howled.
Not a wolf.
Not a man.
But something between.
The First Wolf had stirred.
- Writer
