The Basement Wolf

Chapter 5: Names in the Dark

The cabin smelled of cedar and smoke. Always did. A fire crackled in the stone hearth, throwing restless shadows across the worn wooden walls. Outside, the wind carried the promise of snow, whispering through the pines like secrets only wolves could understand.

Sandra closed the door behind her and leaned against it for a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Her black coat was heavy with city grit, her boots spattered with mud from the back roads that led here. Safe roads. Quiet roads. The kind no one would follow.

“Back late,” Roy said from his chair by the fire. His voice was gravel and warmth at once. Old, like the earth—scarred but steady. He didn’t look at her immediately, just tossed another log into the flames and waited for it to catch.

Sandra pushed her hood back. Midnight hair spilled over her shoulders, damp from the drizzle that clung to the night. “Traffic,” she lied. Then, after a beat: “And trouble.”

Roy’s ears twitched beneath the steel-gray waves of his hair. He looked at her now, those wolf-yellow eyes sharp despite the years. “You’ve been hunting again.”

“Not prey,” she said softly, shrugging out of her coat. Beneath it, her black sweater clung to curves honed by hunger and survival. “Information.”

Roy grunted, setting his mug down with a heavy thud. “Information’s more dangerous than claws these days.”

She crossed to the table, where a chipped enamel kettle steamed gently. Poured herself tea with hands that didn’t shake—because they never did anymore. Too much blood had trained them steady. She stood there for a moment, staring at the rising vapor as if it might shape answers in the air.

Then she said his name.

“Liam.”

The sound hollowed the room.

Roy’s eyes softened. “First time you’ve said it out loud since you came here.”

Sandra’s throat worked, but she didn’t look at him. “I found a thread. A banker. And a school. Northbridge Academy.” Her fingers tightened on the cup until the porcelain groaned. “He’s there. My son is there.”

Roy’s silence was a weight pressing against her ribs.

Finally: “And what will you do with that thread, little wolf? Pull it until the whole pack strangles?”

Sandra turned, her blue eyes burning like winter lightning. “I will follow it until it leads me to him. To all of them.”

Roy studied her—this woman who’d crawled out of hell with chains still biting her wrists. The scars were under her skin now, woven into bone and breath. “Sandra… I’ve seen vengeance eat better wolves than you alive. You find your boy, then what? You think Stefan will let you take him?”

The name ripped through her like glass.

“Stefan.” She let it linger on her tongue, bitter and sweet in the same breath. Her lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “He was the kindest prison I ever knew. Said if I gave him a son, he’d buy me freedom.” Her voice thinned to a blade. “I believed him.”

Roy’s brows knit. “And he broke that promise.”

“He broke me,” she said simply. Then, softer: “But Liam… Liam was worth every scar.”

She sank into the chair opposite him, setting her tea down untouched. For a moment, her hands covered her face, and in the flicker of firelight, she looked like the girl she once was—the one who dreamed of skies beyond bars. Then the mask slipped back into place, sharp and merciless.

“I won’t stop, Roy,” she whispered through her fingers. “Not until every man who turned that key pays for what he did. And not until my children come home.”

The old wolf’s sigh was smoke curling to the rafters. “You think vengeance will bring them peace?”

“No,” she said, lifting her head. Her hair spilled forward like ink on snow, framing eyes that burned too bright to be called human. “But it will make the world safer for when they learn the truth.”

Roy looked at her for a long time, his silence heavier than any argument. Finally, he reached for the kettle, refilled his mug, and said nothing more. He knew when a storm couldn’t be stopped—only endured.

Sandra rose without finishing her tea. The narrow hallway stretched before her like a tunnel of ghosts. Her boots made no sound on the worn boards as she walked to the small room at the end—the one Roy called hers, though she’d never truly belonged anywhere.

She closed the door and pressed her back against it, letting her head fall against the wood. For a moment, darkness wrapped her like a shroud, and she let herself feel the weight of it—the chains, the screams muffled by stone walls, the taste of blood and lies.

Liam. Her firstborn. With Stefan’s dark hair and wolf-silver eyes. She’d held him once, just once, before they tore him from her arms and sold her womb to the next bidder. Her breath hitched, rage clawing up her throat like fire.

Two more names haunted her. Two more lives stolen. Her daughter. Her youngest boy. Faces she’d never seen outside fevered dreams. She vowed to paint the earth in the blood of men before she let those dreams die.

But tonight… tonight her mind betrayed her.

Bradley Gray.

The name slid through her thoughts like smoke—uninvited, unwanted, but impossible to chase away. His voice still curled in her ear, low and steady as the click of a safety being switched off. His scent lingered—a dark, grounding thing that made her wolf lift its head and breathe for the first time in years.

Mate.

She hated the word. Hated the pull that made her chest ache when she thought of his hands on the wheel, veins taut like ropes of steel. The way those green eyes stripped her bare without touching skin. The kiss they hadn’t shared but burned like a phantom against her lips.

Sandra squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her fists to her temples. There was no room for this. Not now. Not when the shadows of her past still bled into every breath she took. Not when vengeance was the only language she spoke fluently.

But in the silence, his voice whispered back.

Careful with that one. He slithers for a living.

She had lied to him. About everything that mattered. And still, he’d agreed to help her.

Why?

Sandra lay down on the narrow bed, boots still on, staring at the ceiling beams like they could spell out answers in the dark. But all she saw were faces. Liam. Her other children. And in the spaces between them, green eyes that wouldn’t let her go.

Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow, she would find the next lead. Tomorrow, she would tighten the noose on every name that once owned her life.

And tomorrow, she would stop thinking about Bradley Gray.

Even if it killed her.