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AUbrEY

D arkness closes in around me like a living thing, heavy and oppressive, pressing against my skin. My flashlight beam seems weaker with each step, the batteries slowly dying, leaving me with a shrinking bubble of light as I navigate the winding passage.

My thoughts spiral between fear and determination as I move forward, each step taking me further from Jensen, further into the unknown. The rock wall that now separates us might as well be a continent. I’ve never felt so alone, so utterly isolated from everything familiar and safe.

“Keep it together,” I mutter to myself, the sound of my voice a small comfort in the pressing silence. “Keep moving. Find another way.”

The passage twists and narrows, forcing me to turn sideways at times to squeeze through tight spots. The rough stone scrapes against my jacket, catching on the fabric with an unpleasant sound that echoes in the confined space. I try not to think about the weight of the mountain above me, the tons of rock that could collapse at any moment, just as the ceiling had fallen between Jensen and me.

I try not to think about spiders. God, this place has to be crawling with them.

I check my gun for the third time in as many minutes, the familiar weight offering little reassurance against whatever might be waiting ahead. A couple rounds won’t do much against a cave full of hungry ones, but the routine movement of checking the magazine, confirming the safety, keeps my hands busy, my mind focused on something concrete. I can almost trick myself into thinking I’m back on the job. Lord, I wish I was about to bust into a crack house and search for a missing woman instead of this. Anything but this.

The passage opens suddenly into a chamber, not as vast as the settlement area but large enough that my light gets swallowed. The air feels different here—slightly warmer, carrying a scent I can’t immediately identify. Something earthy and familiar, almost like…

Home.

The realization stops me in my tracks. This place smells like our childhood home—like the lavender sachets my mother used to make and place in every drawer, every closet. The scent transports me instantly through decades, a visceral memory so powerful it makes my breath catch.

What the fuck?

“Hello?” I call out against my better judgment, my voice immediately swallowed by the darkness. “Is anyone here?”

Only silence answers, but the feeling of being watched intensifies, raising goosebumps along my arms. I turn slowly, sweeping my flashlight across the chamber, the beam catching on natural stone formations that cast strange, anthropomorphic shadows against the walls.

That’s when I hear it—so faint at first I think I’ve imagined it. A soft humming, melodic and hauntingly familiar. A tune without words, rising and falling in gentle cadence.

My mother’s lullaby.

That’s what it is.

The one she hummed to Lainey and me when we were small, before her illness took her too far away to remember such things. I know it now, clear as day.

“Who’s there?” I call, my voice stronger now, driven by a mixture of fear and impossible hope. “Show yourself!”

The humming continues, growing slightly louder, though I can’t pinpoint its source. The cave’s acoustics distort the sound, making it seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

I move deeper into the chamber, following the melody, my flashlight beam darting frantically from shadow to shadow. The humming leads me toward a small alcove in the far wall, a natural recess in the stone barely visible until I’m almost upon it.

As my light falls across the alcove, a figure shifts in the darkness—someone sitting hunched against the wall, knees drawn up to chest, face obscured by a curtain of matted blonde hair.

My heart stops, then lurches painfully forward.

“Lainey?” The name escapes me in a broken whisper, half question, half prayer.

The humming stops.

Slowly, achingly slowly, the figure raises its head.

And there she is.

Elaine Wells.

My sister.

Her face is gaunt, cheekbones too sharp beneath skin that’s unnaturally pale, almost translucent in the harsh beam of my flashlight. Dark veins map the surface like rivers seen from above, pulsing visibly with each heartbeat. Her eyes reflect the light with that same unnatural blue I’ve seen in the hungry ones, but they’re still recognizably hers—the same shape, the same intelligence behind them.

She’s changed, transformed—but not completely. Not like Hank or Red. Something of Lainey still remains, trapped inside this halfway state between human and other.

“Aubrey,” she says, her voice raspy with disuse but undeniably hers. “You came.”

A sob tears from my throat, loud in the silence of the cave. Three years of searching, of hoping against hope, of nightmares and guilt—all culminating in this moment of impossible reunion.

“Lainey,” I manage, my voice breaking around her name. “Oh, Lainey. I found you. I finally found you.”

She stands in a way that’s both familiar and wrong—too fast, too graceful for the sister I remember. In the fuller light, I can see more changes: her fingernails lengthened into something like claws, her teeth slightly too sharp when she parts her lips, her posture subtly altered as if her spine has been reconfigured.

But it’s her.

It’s still fucking her .

“You shouldn’t have come now,” she says, though there’s no anger in her tone, only a profound sadness. “These mountains are dangerous. I left the journal so you’d understand, so you wouldn’t keep looking.”

“I had to,” I say simply, forcing myself to stand firm though every instinct screams to run.

Because it’s her and it’s not her.

“I couldn’t leave you out here,” I add. “Not without knowing.”

A pained smile crosses her face, revealing those too-sharp teeth. “Always the protector. Always trying to fix what’s broken. You haven’t changed, Aubrey.”

I take a tentative step forward, then another. Lainey doesn’t move, watching me with those luminous blue eyes, allowing me to approach. When I’m close enough to touch her, I reach out a trembling hand, hesitating just short of her skin.

“Can I…?”

Will you bite me?

Maybe I won’t mind.

She nods, still holding that sad smile.

I let my fingers brush her cheek, half-expecting it to feel alien, wrong. But it’s just skin—cold, yes, colder than it should be, but still unmistakably human.

My sister’s face under my palm.

“What happened to you?” I whisper, tears blurring my vision. “The journal, it didn’t explain everything. How are you still…you? The others, I’ve seen others, our crew, they changed completely. They lost themselves. But not you.”

Lainey steps back, my hand falling away from her face. She moves to a flat stone that serves as a natural seat, gesturing for me to join her. I do, keeping a small distance between us, unable to completely silence the warning bells still ringing in my head.

“I’m not still me,” she says quietly. “Not anymore. Not entirely. The hunger is always there, Aubrey. Always clawing at me, demanding to be fed. Sometimes it wins. Sometimes I lose myself to it completely.” She looks down at her hands, those elongated nails glinting in the flashlight beam. “It’s a special kind of hunger. I can eat things. Birds. Rats. Rabbits. I can eat things to fill the stomach but it doesn’t fill the hunger. It doesn’t stop the craving for what I really want. But I can control it better than the others. At least some of the time.”

“Because of our blood,” I say, understanding dawning. “Because we’re descended from Josephine McAlister.”

She nods, surprise flickering across her features. “You know about that?”

“I was paid a visit by Nathaniel,” I explain. “I read your journal, just now. And then of course there’s Jensen.”

“Jensen,” she repeats, a complex emotion passing across her face. “Jensen McGraw. The cowboy. He’s alive? He survived?”

“Yes. He’s here with me. I hired him to find you but we got separated by a cave-in.” I glance toward the passage I emerged from, wondering where he is now, if he’s safe. “Lainey, what happened three years ago? The journal entries stopped so suddenly. All it said was that you were changing, that Adam was changing too.”

A shudder runs through her at Adam’s name, a visceral reaction that speaks volumes. “Adam was never who you thought he was,” she says, her voice hardening. “Who I thought he was, at first. He was controlling, manipulative. When I started researching our family history, discovering the connection to the McAlisters, to these mountains, he tried to stop me. Said I was obsessed, crazy.”

“Like Mom,” I say softly.

“Like Mom,” she agrees, a flash of pain crossing her features. “No one likes to be told they’re crazy. But I ignored him. He was merely a blip in a lifetime of need. And when that didn’t work, he changed tactics. Decided to come with me to the mountains. I thought he was finally supporting me, but really he just wanted to control where I went, what I found.”

She stands, pacing the small space with that strange, too-fluid grace. “We hired Jensen as a guide. He was…kind enough. Understanding. Didn’t treat me like I was crazy when I talked about the family connection, the dreams I’d been having. Instead, he seemed to understand it and that was rare.” A ghost of a smile touches her cracked lips. “I liked him.”

The admission stirs something complicated in my chest—jealousy, perhaps, or possessiveness. I push it aside, focusing on her story. “Then what happened?”

“We found the entrance to the caves. Jensen warned us not to go in too deep, but I was determined. Adam insisted on coming with me, despite Jensen’s warnings.” Her face darkens with the memory. “We’d been exploring for hours when we first encountered them. The hungry ones. We tried to run, but there were too many, the passages too confusing.”

She stops pacing, arms wrapping around herself as if cold. “Adam was bitten first. I saw it happen—saw the change start immediately, the hunger take hold. But instead of attacking the creatures, he turned on me. On his own girlfriend.” Her voice breaks slightly. “Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. He had been turning on me for a while by then. He bit my shoulder, my neck. I thought I was going to die.”

I think of Red, Hank, and Cole. “But you didn’t change like they did,” I say. “Not completely. You didn’t lose yourself.”

“No. The McAlister blood…it makes us different. The transformation is slower, less complete. I can fight it, control it—sometimes. Not always.” She looks at me directly, those unnaturally blue eyes locking with mine. “Mom could control it too, I think. That’s what her episodes were—the hunger trying to take over. The drugs they gave her didn’t cure anything, just numbed her enough to keep the hunger dormant. They never really listened to her, they just tried to shut her up. No one took her seriously enough. They never do, do they?”

The revelation hits me like a physical blow. All those years watching our mother deteriorate, believing it was schizophrenia, psychosis—when actually, she was fighting this genetic curse.

“Why didn’t she tell us?” I ask, the old hurt resurfacing.

“Would you have believed her?” Lainey counters gently. “Would anyone? Even if she was mentally ill, it was a way to keep her quiet and out of view. No one wants to hear our trauma. No one wants to hear the truth.”

“And now Adam?” I prompt, needing to understand everything.

Lainey’s expression hardens, a flash of genuine fear crossing her features. “Adam embraced the transformation completely. Reveled in it. The hunger made him stronger, more vicious—and he was already cruel before. Now he’s their leader. He controls the hungry ones somehow, directs them like a pack.”

“He’s the one who’s been herding us,” I realize.

“Yes.” She takes my hands in hers, her skin cold against mine. “He still wants me, Aubrey. Wants me to surrender completely to the hunger, to join him as his…mate, I suppose. He has just enough intelligence, I think because he fed from my blood at first. When I fight the transformation, when I cling to my humanity, it enrages him. He’s punished me for it, repeatedly.” She pauses. “He still wants my blood, still tries to take it as power for himself.”

I glance at her arms, now seeing the scars I missed before—marks of violence, of cruelty. Rage builds in my chest, hot and fierce. “I’ll kill him,” I say, meaning every word. “For what he did to you, I’ll kill him.”

Lainey shakes her head, a sad smile touching her lips. “You can’t. He’s too strong now, too protected by the others. And besides…” She trails off, something like resignation settling over her features. “I don’t know how much longer I can fight this. The hunger grows stronger every day. Sometimes I lose days, weeks—coming back to myself covered in blood, with no memory of what I’ve done, who I’ve killed.”

“There has to be a cure,” I insist, squeezing her hands. “A way to reverse this.”

“I’ve been searching for three years,” she says softly. “These caves hold secrets, ancient knowledge about the curse, but nothing about how to end it. The best I’ve found is a way to temporarily suppress the hunger—a mixture of certain minerals and mud found deep in the cave system. It buys me time, clarity, but it’s not a cure.”

“Then we’ll find one,” I say with determination that surprises even me. “Together. Or at least a way to control it better. You’ve survived this long. There must be a way.”

There has to be.

Lainey studies my face, something like hope flickering behind those alien blue eyes. “You don’t hate me? Fear me? After seeing what I’ve become?”

“You’re my sister,” I say simply. “I’ve spent three years searching for you. I’m not giving up now just because things are more complicated than I expected.”

A lot more complicated than I expected.

A sound echoes from deeper in the cave system—a strange, high-pitched call that raises goosebumps along my arms. Lainey tenses immediately, her head snapping toward the sound, body going rigid with alert wariness.

“They’re coming,” she whispers, releasing my hands and backing away. “Adam. The others. They know you’re here.”

Of course they do.

This was their plan all along.