Blood Moon Rising

Chapter 5 : Ghosts of the past

Lena Graves never talked about the summer Cade Mercer disappeared.

She had been seventeen then, restless and reckless, spending most of her time sneaking out past curfew, driving too fast down back roads, and searching for something she couldn’t name.

And more often than not, she found it with Cade.

They had always been drawn to each other, even when they shouldn’t have been. He was the town’s troublemaker, the boy everyone whispered about—the orphan who lived with his uncle on the edge of the woods, the one who came to school with bruises he never explained, the one whose temper ran hot and wild.

And yet, with her, Cade had been different.

She remembered the stolen nights in his beat-up truck, parked on the cliffs overlooking Black Hollow, where the stars stretched wide and endless above them.

She remembered the way he looked at her, like she was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

And she remembered the night he left.

It had started like any other—just the two of them, a six-pack of stolen beer, and the hum of cicadas in the thick summer air. But Cade had been different that night. Edgy. Distracted.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he had said.

But before he could, the howling started.

Not coyotes. Not wolves.

Something bigger.

Something wrong.

She remembered the way Cade tensed, his entire body going rigid. “Lena,” he had said, his voice urgent, “you need to go home. Now.”

She hadn’t listened. She never listened.

Instead, she followed him into the woods.

She never should have.

The memories after that were fragmented—flashes of movement, the feeling of branches whipping against her skin, the scent of something musky and wild.

And then—Cade, standing under the full moon, his eyes golden and inhuman.

She remembered the way his body shook, how his breath came ragged, the way he clutched his own arms like he was holding himself together.

And she remembered the fear.

Not of Cade.

But of what was coming for him.

Something else had been in those woods that night.

Something worse.

And then—nothing.

She woke up in her own bed the next morning, with no memory of how she got there. Cade was gone. His house was empty. No note. No goodbye.

The town sheriff at the time—Daniel’s father—said Cade had run off. That he was just another lost cause.

Lena never believed that.

Because when she snuck back to the place where she had last seen him, she found something buried under the leaves.

A deep claw mark, carved into the earth.

Not human.

Not animal.

Something else.

And now, ten years later, Cade was back.

And whatever had chased him away was coming with him.