+25 BONUS
Chapter 205
Chapter 205
LOGAN
+25 BONUS
The forest didn’t have a name on any map. Not one you’d find in any official pack ledger, at least. But every wolf who grew up near the Blightwood knew better than to say its name out loud.
That was the kind of place it was,
My tires crunched over brittle gravel, the road narrowing until the trees were practically scraping the sides of the car. I spotted her taillights ahead–dim red orbs flickering the dark like a predator’s eyes.
Cassandra had already arrived. Of course she had. She was standing beside her car when I pulled in, like some gothic statue summoned from the mist.
I killed the engine and stepped out. The cold air hit me like a slap, thick with the scent of moss and distant rot. This wasn’t any wolf’s territory.
Not anymore. This was beyond boundaries now–a jagged slice of no–man’s land the maps avoided, where no pack laid claim. Too dangerous. Too cursed. Even rogues didn’t linger here.
I slammed the car door and shoved my hands into my coat pockets, trying to ignore the sudden weight in my chest. The wind was colder here, sharper somehow, like it knew where to cut.
“What the hell are we doing out here, Cassandra?” I asked, my voice low but brittle.
She turned toward me with a smirk that didn’t belong on any living thing. Her lips curved, sharp and satisfied. “ The Blightwood.”
The name dropped like a stone between us.
I shook my head slowly, already half–turned back toward the car. “This is insane. You said we needed to do something serious. This?” I gestured toward the looming treeline. “This place is a ghost story.”
“The only option left to us,” she said smoothly.
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s cursed.”
She didn’t deny it.
I looked over my shoulder instinctively. The night was too still. No crickets. No birds. Just the soft, constant shiver of brittle leaves brushing against one another, like whispers in a foreign tongue.
“If someone sees me out here—”
“No one sees anything in the Blightwood,” she cut in, her tone soft and final, like a priestess giving last rites. She moved past me, her coat sweeping the ground behind her like a trailing shadow. “That’s the point.”
I didn’t follow. Not yet.
I turned back to the road one last time. But there was no road anymore–just a jagged break in the woods where asphalt had surrendered to rot. The stars above looked pale and cold, smeared by fog that had crept in without sound.
There were no headlights behind us, no sound of approaching engines. Just the sigh of the wind and the distant creak of trees that shouldn’t have been moving.
A pulse of instinct beat under my skin. Every hair on my arms stood on end.
Chapter 205
+25 BONUS
“I can’t stay long,” I muttered, finally forcing my feet to move. “The wedding starts in a few hours. I need to be back before anyone notices I’m gone.‘
Cassandra didn’t acknowledge me. She was already standing near the edge of the trees, still as a grave marker. In her hands was a small wooden box, polished smooth by age and covered in symbols that seemed to shift slightly if I looked at them too long. Not letters–scratches, curves, marks that didn’t belong to any language I knew.
But they stirred something low in my gut. Something old. Uneasy.
“What the hell is that?” I asked quietly.
Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “An offering box.”
That word–offering–twisted my stomach.
She tilted it toward me. “Did you bring it?”
I hesitated, then reached into my coat. The chain was cold in my hand. At the end of it, the old Moonstone medallion swayed like a pendulum–Elena’s, from all those years ago, the talisman she carried when she was living in Silverclaw.
I’d kept it for a reason. Tucked away, wrapped in flannel, as if that might keep it from bleeding memory. I used to tell myself it was a reminder. Now I knew better.
Maybe part of me had always known we’d end up here.
I passed it to Cassandra, who took it without flinching. Her fingers didn’t tremble, not even slightly. She dropped it into the box beside a small glass vial filled with thick, swirling crimson.
Derek’s blood.
C
