Raine POV
The night air was thick with the scent of damp earth and pine as Lena and I slipped through the trees, our footsteps barely making a sound against the forest floor.
It had been a battle just to get out of the house unnoticed. Brielle had been lurking in every damn corner, watching me like a hawk, waiting for me to slip up. But I hadn't. I knew how to move quietly. How to disappear when I needed to.
And now, here we were—back in the woods where the attack had happened.
Where I had been the night before.
A shiver crawled down my spine.
Lena moved beside me, her sharp gaze scanning the darkness. "Alright," she whispered. "We find clues, figure out what the hell happened, and then get the hell out of here before anyone realizes we're gone."
I nodded, but my stomach churned uneasily. This wasn't just about figuring out what attacked the town.
This was about what had happened to me.
The strange pull. The way my body had felt... different.
But I wasn't ready to say that out loud. Not yet.
"Where exactly did it happen?" Lena asked.
I swallowed. "A little further in."
We kept moving, deeper into the shadows, past thick, gnarled roots and towering trees that loomed over us like silent sentinels. The deeper we went, the heavier the air became.
It was subtle at first, but then it hit me all at once.
Something was wrong with this place.
The trees felt too still. The wind was too silent.
And then there was the scent—something sharp, metallic, lingering in the air.
Blood.
Lena tensed beside me. "You smell that?"
I nodded.
We moved cautiously, following the scent until the ground beneath us changed.
Dark patches of dried blood stained the dirt. Claw marks tore through tree bark, deep gashes that looked too precise to be from just any rogue.
A lump formed in my throat. I had seen wolf fights before. I had seen what happened when packs clashed.
But this… this wasn't normal.
Lena crouched, brushing her fingers against the dirt. "These tracks…" she muttered, eyes narrowing. "They're all over the place. Like something was circling."
I swallowed hard, my gaze following the erratic claw marks in the ground. The attack hadn't been random.
It had been calculated.
A chill prickled down my spine.
Something intelligent had done this.
Lena looked up, meeting my gaze. "I don't think this was a rogue."
I exhaled slowly. "Me neither."
We stood there in silence, the weight of our discovery pressing down on us.
Then Lena's eyes flickered with something sharp.
Determination.
"There might be more tracks deeper in," she said. "If we can follow them, we might figure out where it went."
A part of me wanted to say no. Wanted to turn back.
But another part—the part that had been called to these woods last night—refused to back down.
So we pressed forward.
The further we tracked the creature, the stranger things became.
The claw marks didn't just lead in one direction. They looped. Circled. Almost like whatever made them had been playing with its prey before striking.
Then there was the smell.
Not just blood now.
Something else.
Something is wrong.
My gut twisted as the air thickened, turning almost… suffocating.
I placed a hand against a tree, trying to steady my breath.
Lena noticed. "You okay?"
I forced a nod. "Yeah. Just… something feels off."
She hesitated before nodding. "Yeah. I feel it too."
We kept moving, following the tracks until we reached a break in the trees.
And then—
I froze.
Because there, in the middle of the clearing, was something impossible.
A marking carved into the dirt.
A symbol I didn't recognize.
Lena inhaled sharply. "What the hell…"
The symbol was jagged, sharp-edged, like something had burned it into the ground.
"This…" Lena swallowed.
I stepped closer, my heart pounding.
The moment I did, something pulled at me.
I gasped, stumbling back as a strange, burning sensation ran up my arm.
Lena grabbed me. "What? What happened?"
I shook my head, trying to clear the static in my mind. "I don't know," I whispered.
"This feels like Something older".
Something far more dangerous.
And for the first time since sneaking into these woods, I realized—
We weren't just investigating something unknown.
We were standing right in the middle of it.
And something was watching us.
Lena's breath hitched. "Did you hear that?"
A rustling.
A movement in the shadows.
And then—
A pair of glowing red eyes peered at us from the darkness.
My blood ran cold.