A guttural growl rumbled behind her, low and primal, vibrating through the very ground beneath her feet.
Penelope’s breath hitched. A cold shiver raced down her spine as an unnatural stillness settled over the forest. The air itself felt wrong — thick, heavy, as though it carried the weight of something unholy.
Slowly, she turned.
From the shadows, figures emerged — twisted, wretched things that did not belong to this world. Not Lycans. Not werewolves.
Something worse.
Their forms were grotesque mockeries of what they might have once been, their bodies hunched and contorted, joints bending at unnatural angles. Darkness clung to them like a second skin, slithering over their flesh in oily tendrils, dripping from their elongated claws like living tar. Their eyes — if they coul
