WOLFBOUND

CHAPTER TWO: WOLVES DON’T KNOCK

The forest pressed against the windows like a held breath, but Lyra couldn’t stop staring at the boy who wasn’t supposed to exist.

Ronan hadn’t moved. Still half-in, half-out of her world like he hadn’t decided if he was friend or predator. His silver eyes studied her, sharp as moonlight on water, and when he spoke, the chill in his voice wasn’t from the snow outside. “We need to talk, before the others get here.”

Others?

She barely caught the question before Mave’s arm shot out protectively, shielding her like she was a secret someone might steal. “You’re not staying. She’s not ready.”

But Ronan’s gaze didn’t flick to Mave. It stayed locked on Lyra like the rest of the room had gone silent. “You think keeping her in the dark will stop what’s coming? It’s already too late. The packs felt the surge. They know she’s waking.”

Lyra stepped back, her bare heel pressing against the edge of a loose floorboard. Something sharp jabbed into her skin, a nail, maybe, but she didn’t flinch. “What surge? I don’t feel different.”

Ronan’s smile was hollow. “Then you haven’t looked in a mirror.”

Her stomach dropped. She turned without thinking, racing up the stairs two at a time and slamming the bathroom door behind her. The mirror above the sink fogged with her breath, but she wiped it clean, and froze.

Her eyes weren’t brown.

They were gold.

Pulsing.

Alive.

She stumbled back, nearly knocking the towel rack off the wall. The face looking back at her was hers, but not. Her cheekbones looked sharper, her skin glowing faintly like firelight. Even her hair, once a dull chestnut, now shimmered with streaks of burnished gold.

“What is happening to me?” she whispered, but her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

Behind her, the door creaked.

Mave didn’t wait for permission. She stepped in slowly, like Lyra might shatter if she raised her voice. “It’s starting,” she said. “I tried to give you time, Lyra. I thought if I kept the truth buried, it wouldn’t find you.”

Lyra spun. “The truth about what? That I’m some kind of wolf-girl freak? That my dreams kill people?”

“No.” Mave’s voice cracked. “That your blood is hunted. That the name Hollowfang is a curse.”

The word hit Lyra like a whip. Hollowfang. It rang like a bell in her skull, bringing flashes, wolves running through fire, a girl’s scream, a name carved into stone. She pressed her palms to her temples, trying to keep it all out, but the flood had started, and it wouldn’t stop.

“There was a m******e,” Mave said, staring into the mirror instead of at her. “Sixteen years ago. The Hollowfang bloodline, your bloodline, was erased. Or so they thought.”

Lyra blinked. “Erased how?”

“By a pack,” Mave whispered. “By someone we once called kin.”

Her breath caught. “You mean Ronan’s pack?”

Mave didn’t answer.

Downstairs, the floorboards creaked again.

Ronan was pacing. Waiting. But for what?

Lyra turned from the mirror and pushed past Mave, heart thundering. She didn’t care that her reflection was strange, or that her aunt had lied for years. She needed answers. Now. Before the world outside broke down the door and dragged her into it.

But the second her foot hit the last stair, the front window shattered. A stone the size of her fist landed at her feet, wrapped in parchment and soaked in blood. The words on it bled into the wood.

We smell her.

The Hollowfang lives.

Run, or burn.

Lyra’s voice stuck in her throat.

Ronan caught her by the arm, yanking her away from the shards. “We’re out of time,” he said. “They’re coming.”

“Who?” she rasped.

His expression darkened. “Ashen Claws. And Kael Draven doesn’t send warnings. He sends graves.”

Mave was already throwing open a hidden panel beneath the stairs. Inside, old weapons hung like relics, blades etched in runes, crossbows tipped with silver, vials of something that hissed when she touched them.

“I told you she wasn’t ready,” Mave snarled.

“She’ll have to be.” Ronan grabbed a blade and tossed it to Lyra. She caught it awkwardly, the weight unfamiliar but not foreign. Her fingers curled around the hilt like instinct had already taken hold.

Outside, another howl rose. This one wasn’t distant. It was at their doorstep.

The wind changed. It howled through the broken window like a warning, carrying with it the stench of blood and pine. Lyra stepped closer to Ronan, her grip tightening on the blade, though she still didn’t know how to use it.

But something deep inside her did.

“What do they want?” she asked, voice low, heart pounding against her ribs.

Ronan didn’t look at her. “They want what all the old packs want, power. Fenric’s blood runs in you. That makes you the key to the Hollowfang legacy. If they control you, they control everything he left behind.”

Lyra opened her mouth to ask what exactly Fenric left behind, but a shape moved outside, fast, too fast, and the porch creaked under the weight of footsteps not meant for this world.

“They found us,” Mave breathed, pressing her palm to the wooden wall. Sigils lit up across the boards, glowing with runes only visible in moonlight. “This house won’t hold if they break the threshold.”

Ronan’s head snapped toward the door. “Then we don’t wait for it to fall.”

The front door exploded inward, and the first wolf came through.

It wasn’t like the wolves Lyra had seen in books. It stood on two legs, its body draped in shadows and muscle, fur as black as a dying star. Its eyes burned red, lips curling back to reveal teeth too long to belong in anything still called human.

Lyra’s scream caught in her throat.

Ronan lunged forward with a speed that blurred the edges of reality. His coat ripped as he shifted mid-motion, bones snapping, muscles stretching until claws replaced fingers and his mouth was lined with fangs. He didn’t fully shift, just enough to meet the threat head-on, his silver eyes still glowing human even as he drove the blade straight into the beast’s throat.

Blood sprayed across the walls.

Lyra froze, the air thick with copper and death, and her ears rang with a sound she couldn’t place.

It wasn’t the howl of the wolf dying.

It was something in her.

Calling.

Another wolf barreled through the door.

This time, Mave stepped forward. She didn’t shift. She didn’t need to. Her fingers curled, the air around her humming with power as she whispered a word Lyra didn’t understand. Fire burst from her palm in a clean arc, searing through the second wolf’s side and sending it crashing into the bookshelf.

Lyra’s knees buckled. Not from fear, but from something deeper rising in her chest. It wasn’t panic. It was a hunger. A pull toward the violence, toward the chaos. She could feel her own bones twitching, aching to stretch, to shift.

Something inside her snarled.

“Lyra!” Mave shouted, noticing her collapse. “Breathe. You can’t shift now, your body isn’t ready.”

But it was too late. Pain lanced through her spine. Her hands hit the floor, her fingernails cracking, lengthening, curling into claws. Her vision flickered between gold and black. Her teeth ached, her skin stretched.

And still, the front door remained wide open. A third figure stepped into the frame, taller than the others, cloaked in dark fur and bearing eyes like molten coals. Not a beast, but not a man either. His voice came low, calm, like death after silence.

“Found you.”

Ronan snarled. “Kael Draven.”

Draven tilted his head. “The last Hollowfang. Alive. Precious. And still so… soft.”

He raised a hand, and the other wolves stilled. He wasn’t here to fight.

He was here to threaten.

“To the victor goes the blood,” Kael said, grinning. “Run, little Lyra. Shift. Let’s see what’s left of Fenric in you… before the storm decides.”

Then he was gone.

Just like that.

No trace. No scent.

Only a promise left in his place.

Lyra collapsed into Ronan’s arms, her shift retreating, her breathing ragged.

“We need to move,” he whispered against her temple.

But Lyra already knew. They weren’t safe. And she was no longer just a girl waking from a dream.

She was the last of a cursed bloodline. And the hunt had just begun.