I stared at the note until the letters blurred together. Your loving sister, Lyra. The words made no sense. Lyra was dead. I'd watched her disappear beneath the dark water ten years ago.
But Selene's words repeated in my mind: Death is not always the end.
Emma stood in my doorway, tears running down her face. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "They said they'd hurt my little brother if I didn't deliver it."
"Who?" I grabbed her shoulders. "Who threatened your family?"
"I... I can't say. They wore masks. But one voice sounded familiar." She wiped her nose with her arm. "Aria, you can't go to the forest tomorrow night. It's a trap."
"I know." My hands shook as I folded the note. "But what choice do I have?"
"Stay here. Fight them."
"With what army? The whole pack hates me." I sank onto my bed, tiredness hitting me like a brick wall. "Go home, Emma. Lock your doors tonight."
After she left, I blocked my room with the dresser. If someone wanted to hurt me before tomorrow night, they'd have to work for it. Then I fell onto the thin mattress, still clutching Selene's protective charm.
Sleep came fast and hard, pulling me down into darkness.
I was eight years old again, running through the forest with Lyra close behind. Her laughter burst like music as she chased after me on chubby seven-year-old legs.
"Wait up, Aria!" she called. "You're too fast!"
I slowed down, looking over my shoulder at my baby sister. Her dark hair bounced in pigtails, and her cheeks were pink from running. She was beautiful. Everyone said so.
"Where are we going?" she panted, coming up to me.
"Somewhere special. A secret place." I took her hand, warm and small in mine. "But you have to promise not to tell Daddy."
"I promise." Her eyes sparkled with joy. "Is it magical?"
"Maybe." I pulled her deeper into the trees, following a path I'd found weeks earlier. "The older kids say there's a river that grants wishes."
"Really? What will you wish for?"
I thought about it as we walked. What did an eight-year-old want most? "Ice cream for breakfast every day. What about you?"
Lyra's face scrunched up in concentration. "I wish Daddy would smile more. He's always so sad."
Even at seven, she was thinking about others. That was Lyra pure goodness wrapped in a tiny package.
The trees grew thicker as we walked, their limbs weaving together overhead like a green ceiling. Strange flowers bloomed in impossible colors. The air hummed with something that made my skin tingle.
"Aria," Lyra said quietly. "This place feels... different."
"Different how?"
"Like it's watching us."
I looked around, suddenly noticing how quiet everything was. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. Even our footsteps seemed muffled.
"Maybe we should go back," I whispered.
But it was too late. We'd already reached the river.
It was nothing like the bubbling creek I'd expected. This water was black as midnight, smooth as glass. It mirrored nothing—not the sky, not the trees, not our faces as we peered over the bank.
"Make your wish," I told Lyra, trying to sound stronger than I felt.
She closed her eyes tight and mumbled something I couldn't hear. Then she opened them, smiling. "Your turn."
I started to close my eyes, but movement in the water stopped me. Something pale flashed beneath the surface. A face, maybe. Or a hand reaching up.
"Lyra," I said slowly. "Step back from the edge."
"Why? Did you see something?"
Before I could answer, the thing in the water leaped upward. Not a face or a hand, but something made of dark and hunger. It wrapped around Lyra's ankle like a rope.
She screamed as it yanked her toward the water.
"Aria! Help me!"
I grabbed her hands and pulled with everything I had. But the shadow-thing was stronger. It dragged her into the black water inch by terrible inch.
"Don't let go!" Lyra sobbed. "Please don't let go!"
"Never," I promised. "I'll never let go."
But my eight-year-old hands weren't strong enough. One by one, my fingers slipped. Lyra's terrified face slipped beneath the dark surface.
"LYRA!"
I dove in after her, but the water was like ice and oil mixed together. It burned my skin and filled my lungs. I couldn't see anything. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't find her.
When I finally rose, gasping and choking, she was gone.
But as I struggled toward beach, I heard something that turned my blood to ice. Laughter. Sweet, musical laughing that sounded exactly like Lyra.
I spun around in the water, looking for her. "Lyra? LYRA!"
The laughing came again, but this time it was different. Darker. Wrong.
"Thank you, sister," a voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere. "You brought me exactly what I needed."
I jerked awake, screaming.
My room was dark except for moonlight coming through the tiny window. Sweat soaked my clothes, and tears poured down my face. The dream had felt so real. More real than my true memories.
But that couldn't be right. In my real memory, Lyra had slipped on wet rocks and fallen. I'd tried to save her, but she'd been swept away by the river. There was no shadow-creature. No hungry darkness.
Was there?
I pressed my hands to my temples, trying to think. The dream was already dimming, the way dreams do. But the feelings remained—terror, guilt, and something else. Something that felt like truth.
A soft knock on my door made me freeze. Who would visit at this hour?
"Aria?" Ronan's voice, worried and gentle. "I heard screaming. Are you okay?"
I moved the cabinet and opened the door. He stood in the hallway wearing pajama pants and a concerned face.
"Bad dream," I said, wiping my face.
"Must have been terrible. You sounded..." He paused, studying my face. "Like you were reliving something awful."
"Maybe I was." I let him into my room, glad for company. "Ronan, do you know anything about the sacred forest? About what's really in there?"
His face darkened. "Why do you ask?"
"Someone wants to meet me there tomorrow night."
"Absolutely not." His voice turned hard as steel. "Nobody goes into that forest. Not anymore."
"Not anymore? What does that mean?"
Ronan sat on my bed, running his hands through his hair. "There used to be a path through the trees. A shortcut to the nearby pack's territory. But about ten years ago, people started missing."
My heart hammered. "What kind of people?"
"Scouts. Messengers. Anyone who went too deep." He looked at me with worried eyes. "The few who made it back... they weren't the same. They spoke of voices in the darkness. Of things that looked like loved ones but weren't."
The dream flashed through my mind again. Lyra's laughter, sweet and wrong.
"Kael's first mate was one of them," Ronan continued softly.
"She went into the forest chasing reports of rogue behavior. When we found her three days later, she was... changed. Cold. Empty. Like something had eaten her soul from the inside."
"What happened to her?" "She died within a week. Just... faded away. The doctors said her life force was gone, drained by something unnatural."
His jaw clenched.
"That's why Kael is so cold now. He loved her fully, and the forest took her from him." Understanding hit me like lightning.
"That's why he pushes me away." "He's terrified of losing someone else to that place." Ronan gripped my hands.
"Promise me you won't go tomorrow night. Whatever they're saying, we'll find another way." I wanted to promise. But the note crinkled in my pocket, reminding me of the threat. Come alone, or others will pay the price.
"I can't let innocent people get hurt because of me."
"And I can't let you walk into a trap." Before I could answer, another knock echoed through the room. This one harder, more frantic.
"Aria." Kael's voice, rough with some feeling I couldn't name.
"Open the door." Ronan and I exchanged looks. What was Kael doing here at this hour?
I opened the door to find him looking tired, like he hadn't slept in days. His dark hair was messy, and his eyes held shadows I'd never seen before.
"I heard you screaming," he said.
"The whole pack house heard you."
Heat filled my cheeks. "Sorry. Bad dream."
"About what?" "It doesn't matter."
"It does if it's about the forest." His gaze sharpened. "I can smell it on you. The smell of that cursed place." My blood went cold.
"That's impossible."
"Is it?
Dreams have power, Aria. Especially dreams about places touched by dark magic." He stepped into my room, his presence filling the small space.
"What did you see?"
I looked between him and Ronan, both watching me with intense attention. These were the only two people in the pack who seemed to care about my health. If I couldn't trust them, who could I trust? "I dreamed about the day Lyra died," I said slowly. "But it was different from how I remember it."
"Different how?" "In the dream, something in the water took her. Something made of ghosts."
My voice dropped to a whisper.
"And after she vanished, I heard her laughing. But it wasn't... it wasn't her anymore." Kael went very still. "You dreamed of the shadow-feeders." "The what?" "Ancient ghosts that live in the deepest parts of the forest. They feed on pain, guilt, and loss." His eyes met mine, and for the first time since I'd arrived, I saw real emotion there. "They take the shape of things you've lost to torment you."
"But it was just a dream." "Was it?" He pulled something from his pocket—a small, leather-bound notebook. "This belonged to my first mate, Sarah. I found it after she died." He opened to a page near the end.
In shaky handwriting, I read: The dreams are getting worse. I see things that never happened, but feel true. Marcus is there, my brother who died in the war. But he's wrong somehow. Empty. He keeps calling to me, asking me to join him in the dark water. My hands shook as I read on: Kael thinks I'm going crazy. Maybe I am. But the forest is calling, and I don't think I can resist much longer.
"She wrote that the night before she went into the forest," Kael said softly.
"The night before it took her from me." The room fell silent except for the sound of my beating heart.
"The dreams are how they call to you," Kael added. "How they prepare you for what's coming."
"Then I'm already lost."
"No." He closed the journal, his jaw set with resolve.
"Not if I can help it."
A new sound broke the silence footsteps in the hallway. Multiple sets, moving with purpose toward my room. Ronan was at the window instantly.
"There are people surrounding the house. At least a dozen." Kael's nostrils flared. "I smell smoke." My blood turned to ice. "They're not waiting until tomorrow night."
"Who's not waiting?" Kael demanded.
Before I could answer, orange light flickered outside my window. Flames were spreading up the side of the pack house, eating through the old wood like it was paper. Someone banged on my door.
"Fire!
Everyone out!
Fire!"
But as we moved toward the door, I caught a familiar smell beneath the smoke.
Something sweet and rotten, like flowers left too long in stagnant water.
The smell from my dream. The smell of the forbidden forest.
"It's not just a fire," I whispered.
"They're here."