Chapter Two: Whispers Beneath the Pines
The night air pressed down on me as if the whole world had turned its back. My legs carried me past the edge of the packhouse, through the open grounds where the moonlight could not soften the stares. The ceremony still echoed behind me: Damien’s rejection ringing like a curse, Seraphina’s jeweled smirk burning into my mind.
Laughter and whispers trailed after me.
“She thought she could be Luna?”
“Even cursed blood dares to dream.”
A deeper voice hissed, “It happened once before, didn’t it? Another she-wolf who—” The rest was lost as someone hushed him quickly. My heart stumbled. Once before?
I didn’t turn back. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing tears on my face. My only focus was the tree line ahead, dark and sheltering, the pines rising like silent sentinels. If the pack rejected me, perhaps the forest would not.
But as I crossed the boundary of grass to shadow, something shifted. The silver jewel at Seraphina’s throat caught the moonlight, even from this distance, and flared. A pulse of blue shimmered across my skin like cold fire. My wrist burned where the faint mark had appeared during the ceremony.
Jonah’s hand closed around my arm before I could stumble. “Elena—wait.” His eyes were wide, his chest rising and falling as if he had run a great distance, though he’d been beside me all along. The mark’s glow reflected in his gaze for a heartbeat, then vanished.
“What is happening to me?” My voice cracked despite the wall I tried to hold around it.
Jonah’s grip loosened. He looked shaken, as though he too had felt something surge through him when the mark blazed. For a moment, he said nothing, and the silence between us was worse than the whispers behind.
Finally, he shook his head. “We need to get you somewhere safe. Away from all of them.”
I almost laughed. Safe? Where in this pack, this cursed skin, could I possibly be safe? But Jonah’s voice carried the same steadiness it had always had, the kind that anchored me when everything else was chaos. So I let him lead me into the forest, our footsteps muffled by pine needles and damp earth.
The deeper we went, the thicker the silence became. Not the peaceful hush of nature, but the kind that waits before a predator strikes. The pines whispered, their branches creaking as though words clung to the air.
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
Jonah paused. His shoulders tensed, then relaxed, but his hand never strayed far from the dagger strapped to his thigh. “The forest talks in ways most ignore. My grandmother used to say, “There are teeth between these trees if you listen long enough.”
Teeth. The word sent a shiver crawling down my spine.
We reached a clearing where moonlight spilled through in a pale circle. Jonah guided me to a fallen log. “Sit. Breathe.”
I lowered myself onto the wood, but my pulse did not steady. My wrist burned again, faint but insistent, as though the mark had its own heartbeat. Jonah knelt before me, studying it. When his fingers brushed the skin, his own breath hitched sharply. For an instant his eyes glowed—not the golden hue of his wolf but something darker, almost shadow-black. He pulled back as though burned.
“What was that?” I asked.
His jaw tightened. “I… don’t know. But it felt like—like a thread tied between us.”
Something in his voice wavered between awe and fear. My heart lurched. Jonah, my one true friend, the one who had always stood by me when the rest of the world pushed me away—was he now bound to the same curse that haunted me?
Before I could press him, a howl split the night. Low, mournful, and close. The air thickened with menace.
Jonah was on his feet in an instant, dagger drawn, his body poised between me and the shadows. “We shouldn’t linger here.”
The howl came again, this time answered by another, further away but no less chilling.
Jonah’s free hand reached for mine, tugging me up. “Come. We’ll take the long path around to your cabin.”
The long path led deeper into the woods. Every instinct in me screamed to turn back, to return to the humiliation of the pack house rather than the unknown waiting here. But the mark on my wrist pulsed in rhythm with the howls, almost as if calling back.
“Jonah…” My whisper barely broke the night. “What if this is what Seraphina wanted?”
His expression darkened, though his focus never left the trees. “Then we make sure she doesn’t get what she wants.”
We moved quickly, weaving through shadows, my hand still in his. Each step sent pine needles crunching underfoot, loud against the hush. I tried to steady my breathing, but every sound in the forest seemed to sharpen—the snap of a branch, the flutter of wings, the rustle of unseen creatures.
At last, the cabin came into sight. Small and wooden, barely more than a shack, but it was mine. Jonah pushed the door open first, checked the corners with practiced caution, then waved me inside.
The moment the door shut behind us, my knees weakened. I sank onto the narrow bed, burying my face in my hands. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Jonah crouched in front of me, close enough that I could see the strain around his eyes. “You can take more than you think. You always have. Whatever this curse is, whatever Seraphina did—it doesn’t define you.”
But even as he spoke, the floor trembled faintly. We both froze. The sound that followed wasn’t natural. Not the creak of settling wood or the scurry of mice. It was low and guttural, like a growl forced through clenched teeth.
It came from beneath the floorboards.
The mark on my wrist flared so hot I cried out, clutching it. Jonah’s dagger was in his hand again, but his gaze darted to me, troubled. The glow that had flickered in his eyes earlier returned, brighter this time, as if the growl awakened something inside him.
“Elena,” he said tightly, “whatever’s down there—it’s calling you.”
The boards beneath us rattled. Dust drifted from the seams. My pulse pounded as the growl deepened, not just a sound but a vibration, a living heartbeat in the earth.
And then, in a voice that wasn’t quite a voice, carried through wood and air alike, I heard it: “Daughter of shadows… rise.”
The growl cut off. Silence returned, heavy and suffocating. Jonah gripped my wrist, eyes locked on mine.
“Elena,” he whispered, “this isn’t just a curse. It’s a summoning.”
The mark pulsed again, and I knew—whatever had been buried beneath the pines was awake.
