“Damon! Look what I found! Moonbeam plants! They can help stabilize your wolf’s energy, prevent relapses – “
But he’d barely glanced at them before his phone rang.
Sera. Calling from the human city, crying about some illness she’d contracted.
“I have to take this,” he’d said, already moving toward the door.
I’d tried to follow, to show him the plants, to explain how rare they were, how much they could help him.
He’d waved me off impatiently, and his hand had struck the glass container.
It shattered on the floor, soil and precious plants scattering everywhere. Four days of work, of risk, of sacrifice – destroyed in an instant.
“Clean that up,” he’d said without looking back, his phone already pressed to his ear. “And be quiet. Sera’s upset.”
He’d left me there, kneeling in the wreckage, trying to salvage plants that were already dying without their specialized soil.
I’d cried that night. Not just because the plants were ruined, but because he hadn’t even cared. Hadn’t even noticed.
Now, staring at these moonbeam plants growing wild on a cliff edge in Shadowmere territory, I felt that old hurt rise up like bile in my throat.
No. I pushed the memory down, locked it away. Those days were over. Damon was in my past now.
But these plants… the Shadowmere pack could use them. Their healer had mentioned that Kael’s curse sometimes caused him terrible pain when he fought against it, when his human consciousness tried to surface. Moonbeam plants could help with that. Could ease his suffering.
I made up my mind.
Carefully, I set down my basket and the other herbs I’d collected. The cliff edge was only about ten feet away, and the moonbeam plants grew in a shallow depression that looked stable enough. If I was careful, if I moved slowly, I could harvest them without incident.
I’d done more dangerous things. Survived worse situations.
I got down on my hands and knees, distributing my weight evenly as I crawled toward the cliff edge. The ground was damp from recent rain, slightly muddy, but it seemed solid enough.
My fingers were just closing around the first moonbeam plant, carefully loosening its roots from the soil, when I heard it.
A low, rattling growl that made every hair on my body stand on end.
I froze, my heart suddenly hammering against my ribs.
That wasn’t a normal animal sound. It wasn’t even a normal wolf sound.
It was wrong. Hollow. Like something that shouldn’t exist in the natural world.
Another growl joined the first. Then another. Coming from different directions, surrounding me.
But I couldn’t see anything. The forest around me looked empty, undisturbed.
Except the air had gone deathly still, and my wolf was screaming at me to run, to flee from this forest.
Then I caught the scent.
Rot. Decay. Something ancient and evil that made my stomach heave and my bones turn to jelly.
Nightwalkers.
ARIA
Terror flooded my system as my mind supplied everything I knew about these creatures. They’d been werewolves once – centuries ago – before they’d committed atrocities so heinous that a coven of witches had cursed them. Stripped them of their humanity, their pack bonds, even their physical forms. They existed as invisible predators now, able to hunt without being seen, cursed to an eternal hunger that could never be satisfied.
They were enemies to all – humans, werewolves, even vampires gave them a wide berth. They lived only to kill, to spread the misery of their cursed existence.
And I’d just stumbled into their territory.
Another growl, closer now. I felt something brush against my leg – cold, wrong, making my skin crawl where it touched.
My hands shook as I grabbed the moonbeam plants, yanking them free with their root systems still attached. I couldn’t fight what I couldn’t see. My only option was to run.
I scrambled backward from the cliff edge, snatching up my basket and the other herbs I’d collected. My wolf was trying to surface, wanting to shift, but what good would that do against invisible predators?
The growling intensified, surrounding me on all sides.
I ran.
Branches whipped at my face as I crashed through the underbrush, no longer caring about staying on the established paths. My wolf’s instincts guided me, helping me dodge trees and leap over fallen logs. Behind me, I could hear the nightwalkers giving chase – the sound of their pursuit like wind through dead leaves, like whispers from a grave.
Something struck my shoulder, claws I couldn’t see tearing through my jacket and into flesh. I bit back a scream and pushed harder, my lungs burning.
The pack borders. If I could just reach the pack borders where the guards patrolled –
But I wasn’t going to make it. I could feel them gaining on me, sense their invisible forms closing in.
Another strike, this time catching my leg. I stumbled, went down hard, my basket flying from my hands. Herbs scattered across the forest floor.
I rolled onto my back just in time to see the air shimmer where one of the nightwalkers stood over me. Not quite invisible – more like looking at something through water, a distortion that hurt to focus on.
It raised what must have been a clawed hand, preparing to strike.
This was it. This was how I died – alone in a forest, killed by cursed creatures, never knowing if bonding with Kael could have saved him, never getting the chance to truly start over.
The nightwalker’s claws descended.
And then a massive black shape slammed into it from the side.
Kael.
Even in wolf form, trapped by his curse, he was magnificent. Huge and powerful, his midnight fur marked with those strange silver patterns that seemed to glow in the dim forest light. His eyes blazed gold as he tore into the invisible nightwalker, his fangs finding purchase on something I couldn’t see.
Black blood sprayed across the ground – nightwalker blood, visible even when their bodies weren’t.
But there were more of them. Four others materialized around Kael, their shimmer-forms circling him like sharks scenting blood in water.
Five against one.
“Kael, run!” I screamed, trying to scramble to my feet despite my injured leg. “There are too many – “
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