010
1711 Words
The Hounds are Out
VINA HALE
If my life were a video game, this would be the level where the music gets really fast, the screen starts flashing red, and I realize I’ve forgotten to save my progress for the last three hours.
Note to the Moon Goddess: ‘I know I asked for stealth mode, but I didn't realize that being a ghost in the Forbidden Forest meant I would also be a buffet for every supernatural mosquito within a five-mile radius.’
I’ve been walking for what feels like a decade, but according to the position of the Blood Moon—which is still staring at me like a giant, judgmental eye—it’s probably only been a few hours.
My feet aren’t just blistered anymore; they’ve reached a state of unauthorized structural integrity failure. Every step in these boots feels like I’m walking on hot LEGOs covered in salt.
And then there’s the Double Pulse.
Usually, when you’re pregnant, you get cravings for pickles or ice cream. My babies? They crave existence.
It’s like they’re running a high-intensity interval training session inside my uterus using my remaining calories as fuel.
The Lycan beat—The Drummer—is getting louder, more rhythmic. It’s a heavy, thrumming power that makes my skin feel too tight for my body.
The Wolf beat—The Flicker—is smaller, but it’s clinging to me with a desperate, sharp energy. Together, they are draining me.
I’m not just tired; I’m evaporating.
I stopped to lean against a tree that was covered in glowing purple fungus. I looked down at my hands.
They were shaking.
I was pale, sweaty, and I smelled like a mixture of sewer water and jasmine-scented terror.
“Okay, team,” I whispered, patting my stomach. “I know you’re hungry, but if you could stop eating my life force for ten minutes so we don't get murdered, that would be a top-tier sibling move. Thanks.”
The forest suddenly went silent.
Not the quiet night kind of silent. Every living thing just realized a predator walked into the room kind of silent.
And then, I heard it.
A howl.
It wasn't Jace’s howl. Jace’s howl was like a thunderstorm—grand, powerful, and oddly melodic.
This howl was different. It was thin, high-pitched, and sounded like a saw cutting through bone.
The Black-Bane Trackers.
Magnus didn't send the regular pack warriors.
He didn't want a witness to my suicide.
He sent his personal hounds—the wolves who had been fed a diet of silver and dark magic until their souls were as twisted as the trees around me.
They don't track by scent alone; they track by the vibration of your fear. And right now? My fear was a freaking symphony.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, pushing myself off the tree.
I tried to run, but my body had other ideas.
I staggered forward, my vision blurring. The Double Pulse surged again, a wave of Lycan heat radiating from my core.
It was trying to protect me, trying to give me the strength to move, but I was a human-sized battery and I was at 1%.
Howl.
They were closer. I could hear the snapping of twigs, the heavy, rhythmic padding of paws on the silver moss.
There were three of them. I could smell them now—the scent of wet fur, copper, and rotting meat.
I pushed through a thicket of thorns that shredded my gray tunic and my skin alike. I didn't feel the scratches. I only felt the burning in my lungs and the heavy, magnetic pull of the forest deeper into the dark.
I burst through a wall of black-lace vines and stopped dead.
The moss ended. The trees ended.
In front of me was a massive, yawning ravine. It was a jagged tear in the earth, at least a hundred feet across, plunging down into a misty abyss where I could hear the roar of a subterranean river far below.
There was no bridge. There was no way across.
I turned around, my back to the edge.
Three shadows emerged from the fog.
They weren't quite wolves, and they weren't quite men. They were hunched, elongated nightmares with matted black fur and eyes that glowed with a sickly, pale yellow light.
Their mouths were dripping with a thick, gray foam.
One of them—the leader—stepped forward, his claws scraping against the rock.
He shifted slightly, his jaw unhinging in a way that was definitely not Moon-Goddess-approved.
“Alpha Magnus… says… hello,” the creature rasped. The words sounded like they were being dragged over broken glass.
“He says… the mistake… ends… tonight.”
I reached for the black-bone hilt of my silver dagger. My fingers were so cold I could barely grip it.
Dusty! I screamed in my mind. ‘I need you! If you ever wanted to be a hero, now is the literal last second of the clock!’
But my wolf stayed silent.
She was curled in the dark, mourning a mate who was currently probably sleeping soundly in a silk-sheeted bed while his "mistake" was cornered like a rat.
The tracker lunged.
I swung the dagger, a desperate, clumsy arc.
The silver caught him across the shoulder, and he let out a screech that made my ears bleed. He backed off, hissing, the silver burning into his dark fur like acid.
But there were two more.
And I was swaying on my feet.
The second tracker circled to my left, his tail twitching. He knew I was finished. He could smell the twins—the delicious, high-octane power of the heirs—and he wanted a taste.
I looked over my shoulder at the ravine.
It was a long way down.
“If you think I’m going to let you touch them,” I whispered, my voice cracking, “you’ve clearly never met an Omega with a grudge.”
I held the dagger out, my knuckles white.
My heart—my actual, human heart—was failing.
The babies were pulling too much. My vision was tunneling. The world was turning into a series of gray smears.
Thump-THUMP.
The Lycan pulse hit me like a physical blow. It was so strong my knees buckled.
It wasn't an anesthetic anymore; it was a flare. It was a beacon. It was a "Here I Am" shouted into the universe.
The trackers froze.
They felt it too.
They looked at my stomach with a mixture of greed and pure, unadulterated terror.
The leader crouched, preparing for a final, lethal spring.
“Goodbye, Jace,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I didn't mean it as a romantic farewell. I meant it as a curse.
The tracker leapt.
I felt the rush of wind. I felt the heat of his breath. I prepared for the impact that would send me tumbling into the abyss.
But the impact never came.
Instead, there was a sound—a sound so loud and primal it made the very earth under my feet shudder. It wasn't a howl. It wasn't a roar. It was the sound of the shadows themselves tearing open.
A flash of violet light blinded me.
I heard the sickening crunch of bone meeting something much, much harder. A wet, gurgling scream followed.
I opened my eyes, my knees finally giving out as I collapsed onto the cold rock.
One of the trackers was gone—literally flattened into the stone like he’d been hit by a falling mountain.
The other two were backing away, their predatory arrogance replaced by a whimpering, submissive terror I’d never seen before.
Standing between me and the monsters was a shadow.
He was huge. Easily seven feet tall, but he didn't look like a wolf. He looked like a nightmare dressed in midnight. He was wearing a long, black duster that seemed to bleed into the fog, and his hair was the color of a winter storm.
He didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one.
He reached out and caught the second tracker in mid-air, his hand closing around the beast’s throat with the ease of a man picking a grape. With a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed the creature into the ravine. T
he tracker didn't even have time to howl before the mist swallowed him.
The third tracker turned to run, but the shadow was faster than the eye could follow. A blur of movement, a snap of a neck, and then silence.
The shadow stood there for a moment, his back to me.
The air around him was vibrating with a power so immense it made Jace’s Alpha aura look like a birthday candle.
He turned around.
He wasn't a wolf. His eyes were a deep, ancient violet, swirling with a galaxy of stars.
He looked at me, his gaze dropping to my stomach where the "Double Pulse" was currently losing its absolute mind.
He walked toward me. I tried to lift my dagger, but it slipped from my numb fingers, clattering onto the rock.
He knelt in front of me. He smelled like ozone, ancient parchment, and something cold and regal.
“A Silver Lycan,” he whispered, his voice a smooth, dark velvet that seemed to echo in the very center of my skull. “And she’s carrying the twins of the prophecy.”
He reached out, his long, elegant fingers hovering just inches from my face.
“Who… who are you?” I managed to gasp before the darkness finally claimed me.
The last thing I felt was his arms—strong, cool, and steady—lifting me off the hard rock as if I weighed nothing at all.
“I am the King of the things that hide from the sun, little wolf,” he murmured. “And you? You just became the most dangerous woman in the world.”
I was unconscious. Rescued. And officially under the protection of someone who makes the Silver Moon Pack look like a litter of puppies.
‘When you’re at the end of your rope, sometimes the universe sends a King.’
Good luck finding me now, Jace.
You’re going to need it.
- Writer
