Page 14

KATE

T he cold up here isn’t the kind that pricks your skin—it burrows under it. Deep. It curls into your marrow and settles there, like it's laying claim. That clean, sharp air carries the kind of silence you can feel pressing on your bones.

Somewhere behind me, a branch creaks—just one small, dry groan—but it shatters the stillness like a gunshot. The wind doesn’t follow. The silence swallows the sound again almost instantly, like the Hollow is pretending it never happened.

The trail up to the old still site is barely visible anymore, more memory than path, overgrown and forgotten by everyone who doesn’t share my blood. Everyone except Luke.

Brambles claw at my jeans, and moss has eaten away the edges of the old stones we used to mark the route. The forest tries to erase what was ours—but some roots run too deep to pull free.

Luke knew every ridge and root of these hills. He used to wander out here before dawn, long before the rest of us were even thinking about coffee.

I remember one morning I found him already perched on that same ridge by the still, steam rising off his thermos and a sketchbook balanced on one knee.

He didn’t look up right away—just tapped the spot beside him like he’d been waiting.

That’s the kind of presence he had out here, like the woods bent around him, made space. Like the Hollow wanted him close.

He said the morning mist held secrets. Said if you were quiet enough, the Hollow would whisper them to you. I thought it was just poetic nonsense back then. Kid stuff. But now? Now I’m starting to think he was listening to something real.

He used to call it “the hollow within the Hollow.” A pocket of silence tucked between ridgelines where the pack’s rules never mattered much.

It was where he came to breathe. To think. To hide.

He said the air felt different here—older, heavier, like it remembered things we’d never know.

Said it was the one place he could feel his thoughts settle without the constant pull of bloodlines and pack politics.

I never understood what he meant until now, standing here with the wind still and the trees watching like sentries.

It feels sacred. Haunted. And distinctly his.

I used to sneak up after him when I was little, always trying to keep up with his longer stride, always watching the way he seemed to melt into the woods.

He’d ruffle my hair, tell me I was a pain in the ass, then let me sit beside him on the ledge while he sketched symbols into the dirt with a stick.

It was quiet there. Sacred in a way even the chapel in town couldn’t match.

The air is too still. No birds. No wind.

Just the crunch of my boots over the frostbitten ground and the soft rasp of my breath.

Each step echoes too loud, like I’m trespassing on something ancient and watching.

The trees don’t sway. The underbrush doesn’t twitch.

The entire Hollow thrums with silence, braced for whatever comes next.

The weight of the silence settles between my shoulder blades, a pressure I can’t ignore, and my wolf stirs uneasily just beneath the skin—alert, listening, tense.

The still is still there—barely. Half-collapsed.

Rotting timber and rusted pipe, the copper gone green with age and exposure.

The smell hits first—earthy rot and old smoke, ghost traces of mash and ferment lingering in the air like a memory you can’t quite place.

It’s a graveyard for secrets, sure, but it’s also a monument to what once was.

A place that kept our bellies warm and our family fed when the rest of the world turned its back.

I step over a shattered barrel, wood blackened and half-buried in a drift of damp leaves.

The forest here feels older somehow, thicker—like it’s growing over something it doesn’t want found.

The air changes the moment I duck beneath the roof of the old lean-to, the temperature dropping by degrees, the silence growing deeper, heavier. My breath slows. My instincts sharpen.

And then I see it. At first, it’s just a sliver of something wrong—a line too straight in a world made of curves and decay. Not old. Not rotting. Shiny black metal where no black metal should be. Cold. Clean. Out-of-place like a knife laid across a grave.

Wires tucked low along the base of the ridge, almost invisible against the dark mulch and frostbitten undergrowth.

A camouflaged lens peeks from beneath a spray of dead fern, its curve too precise to be natural, its presence far too intentional.

And behind a tangle of brush, the faintest red blink pulses like a heartbeat—steady, watching, alive with purpose.

It’s not just surveillance—it’s a trap, quiet and patient.

What the hell?

It’s the kind of thing you see in movies or nightmares—too clean, too precise, too intentional to be anything but bad news.

A spike of ice knifes down my spine, and every instinct screams that I shouldn't be here.

That I shouldn't have seen this. But it's too late now. I've seen it. And I can’t unsee it.

I crouch low, heart hammering, breath shallow like even that might draw attention.

The gear is sleek, compact—suspiciously high end.

Matte black casing, no brand markings, tucked with precision like someone who knew exactly what they were doing had installed it.

Not something a moonshiner would use. Hell, not something anyone around here could afford unless they were being paid to watch.

And whoever's paying? They're not local.

This feels government. Or worse—private, well-funded, and off the books.

I don’t touch it. Just memorize. The angle of the lens. The direction it’s facing. The way it’s positioned to capture anyone coming in or out of the glade. It’s too professional. Too deliberate. Military-grade? Maybe. Or federal? My gut twists.

“Luke,” I whisper. “What the hell were you into?”

And just like that, I’m back there. Two winters ago.

The attic smelled like cedar and dust, the floorboards groaning beneath every step Luke took.

He was pacing like a caged thing, wild-eyed and sharp-tongued, his voice cracking under the weight of things he didn’t know how to say.

He ran his hands through his hair, his hands trembling; this childhood habit only appeared when he was truly rattled.

The kind of fear in his eyes that night wasn’t about getting caught—it was about being hunted.

“They’re watching,” he said, shoving the old trapdoor closed with more force than necessary. “Not just us. Not just the pack. Everybody.”

“Luke—”

“No. Don’t roll your eyes. I’m serious. I found a trail cam a mile out from the eastern ridge. And not one of ours. This one’s smart. Buried into the bark. Wired into a relay. I don’t know how long it’s been there.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this isn’t about moonshine. Not anymore.”

He didn’t stay much longer after that. He stopped coming to Sunday dinner.

Slipped away from town meetings. Vanished from poker night at the back of the store, where he always used to clean up.

He became a ghost long before he disappeared for good.

And I never saw him pace like that again.

Because one day he was just... gone. No note.

No trace. Just silence and space where my brother used to be.

I remember the way he looked at me that last morning, eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep, like he hadn’t rested in days and couldn’t afford to.

He hugged me longer than usual, tighter, like he knew it might be the last time.

His voice was low when he said it, like someone might be listening even inside our own kitchen—said something about keeping the store running, keeping it out of certain hands.

At the time, I thought he meant Waylon, the way we all did when something went sideways.

But now? Now I’m not so sure. There was fear in his eyes that morning.

And something else—resolve. Like he'd already decided to vanish.

I rise slowly, scanning the ridgeline. No one’s there.

But the back of my neck itches like I’m not alone.

The kind of itch that comes from being watched—closely, silently, like a breath you can’t hear until it’s too close to dodge.

Every instinct I have is on high alert, my wolf pacing behind my ribs.

I wrap my fingers around the strap of my satchel and retrace my steps, faster now.

Each snap of a twig underfoot sounds like a warning.

My boots slip once on a patch of black ice, and I catch myself hard against the trunk of a pine.

Bark scrapes my palm. I curse under my breath and push off, refusing to look back.

Whatever—or whoever—is behind me can’t know I’m rattled. Not yet.

Luke wasn’t paranoid. He wasn’t chasing shadows or spinning stories like I used to think. Something real, something big enough to make even a stubborn bastard like him walk away from everything he loved, had captured his attention. He was right. Dead-on right.

And maybe he wasn’t just trying to disappear.

Maybe he was trying to protect us... me.

Shielding me from whatever he’d seen, whatever he'd gotten tangled in. Leaving behind the clues he could without drawing attention, trusting I’d be smart enough to find them and strong enough to follow the trail.

That’s the kind of brother he was—reckless, secretive, infuriating—but loyal. Always loyal.

There’s a rustle to my left—just enough to make my wolf stir.

I freeze mid-step, breath caught in my throat, eyes scanning the dense underbrush that crowds the edges of the trail.

Nothing moves. No sound follows. But the hair on my arms is already standing up, my skin prickling with the unmistakable awareness of being watched.

Not imagined. Not paranoia. Something—or someone—is out there. And it’s close.

I don’t run. Not yet. Running triggers pursuit—and I don’t want to look like prey. But I do move quicker, weaving through the trees with more urgency now, every footfall calculated, quiet, deliberate. I count each step like a heartbeat, marking the distance with the rhythm of survival.

The forest feels like it’s narrowing behind me, shadows folding inward. Every snap of a twig might be something following.

My breath comes fast now, misting in the cold air, as I break the tree line and finally spot the gravel edge of the fire road where I left my truck up ahead. Relief doesn't come, not really. But I let it in just enough to keep moving.

By the time I make it to the road, my legs are burning and my lungs hurt, the chill biting deeper with every breath, but I don’t stop.

Not for anything. My fingers fumble for the keys before I’ve even reached the door, nerves jangling, pulse a roar in my ears.

I throw myself into the cab and slam the door shut, locking it with a punch of the button and a flick of my eyes to the mirrors. Nothing. Just trees.

But I’m not fooled. That quiet isn’t empty—it’s listening. Watching. And every instinct in me is screaming that this isn’t over. That it never was.

I sit for a long second, breath fogging the windshield in frantic bursts, hands trembling against the steering wheel like they might let go of the fear clamped around my ribs.

The engine turns over with a growl, but I don’t put it into gear.

Not yet. Not until I’ve caught my breath enough to make sure I’m not driving blind—because whatever that was back there, it’s not finished with me. Not even close.

I glance at the glove box, where I keep a small pistol tucked inside a false bottom—a last resort, a line in the sand.

I’d put it there after Hank chased off a drifter with grabby hands and wandering eyes last spring, when I realized even in a town like Wild Hollow, not every threat comes with claws or fur.

I haven’t needed it since. But the weight of its possibility has never felt heavier than it does now.

Because now, I feel it. That line between fear and knowing—the cold certainty that whatever this is, it’s already inside the lines we drew to keep the world out.

Just like Luke said it would be. Just like he warned me, pacing that attic like a man being hunted, eyes wild with truths no one else wanted to hear.

Whatever Luke was running from, it’s not just close. It’s here. And it knows I found it.

My phone buzzes on the seat beside me. Unknown number. One word...

RUN.

My heart skips a beat—suspended for one breathless second—before slamming into overdrive, pounding like it’s trying to break free of my chest. Adrenaline surges fast and fierce, flooding my limbs with heat, and every nerve in my body sparks awake as if I’ve been plugged into a live wire.

The Hollow isn’t just remembering… it remembers. This isn’t just a message. It’s a pattern. A signal. And if they were watching him... they’re watching me now, too.

And it’s getting bolder. Not content to linger in shadows or whisper threats in the dark. Now, it’s making moves—deliberate, strategic. Whatever this game is, I’m in it. And the next move might already be coming for me.