Page 18 of Mate Night Snack (Hollow Oak Mates #2)
EMMETT
E mmett woke to cold air on his chest and the smell of moss.
For a moment, he didn’t move. Just listened.
The cabin creaked softly. The early light filtering through the window painted thin stripes across the bed. His arm stretched toward her side of the mattress.
Empty.
His heart dropped.
“Katniss.”
No answer.
He sat up, eyes adjusting fast, the wolf inside him rousing like a second heartbeat pounding in his ribs.
Her boots were gone from beside the door. So was her bag. And the faintest trace of her scent drifted out through the half-cracked window.
Not fear. Not yet. But something tugged at him like a thread pulled too tight.
He got dressed in seconds in his thermal shirt, jeans, boots, jacket and moved through the front door into the woods without a sound.
The forest met him with cool silence. Birds hadn’t started yet. The breeze was slow, thick with wet pine and old stone.
He followed her scent.
It curved around the ridge and hooked sharp toward the east trail—familiar, but off-kilter.
She hadn’t taken the main path. Not the safe one.
His pulse climbed as he realized where she was headed.
The Hollow Stone.
He moved faster.
The Hollow Stone wasn’t on any town map. Not even the council kept notes on it.
It sat at the heart of the eastern woodlands, older than Hollow Oak itself. A granite slab half-buried in a ring of twisted trees, carved with faded markings no one living could read. Some said the Veil had opened there first. Others said it was the Veil.
All Emmett knew was this: no one came here unless they were called.
And even fewer left unchanged.
The moment he stepped into the clearing, the air shifted. Cooler. Heavier. Like walking into a room that had been holding its breath for centuries.
Katniss stood at the end of the stone, barefoot in the grass, notebook clutched loosely in one hand. Her hair was tangled from sleep, her band tee wrinkled, her legs still dusted with pine needles.
She looked like something out of a dream. Or a warning.
He didn’t call her name. Just crossed the clearing slow, careful, until he stood behind her.
“You ever gonna stop running off to where you shouldn’t be?” he asked.
She flinched, then exhaled, soft and shaky. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You never do.”
She turned slowly, her eyes glassy but clear. “It was stronger this time.”
He stepped closer. “What did you see?”
“Nothing I could hold on to. Just feelings. A pull. The stone was in it.” She gestured toward the slab. “It wanted me here.”
His hands flexed at his sides. “It doesn’t want. It pulls. It tests.”
Katniss frowned. “What is it, exactly?”
“No one knows,” he said. “The fae say it’s a memory. The shifters say it’s a gate. Varric says it’s the place where everything started and might end.”
“That’s comforting,” she muttered.
“I didn’t say it was safe.”
He looked at her and realized her hands were shaking.
She noticed his gaze and tucked them behind her back. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m managing, Emmett. That’s more than I can say for the rest of this town.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Just stepped in and reached for her notebook. She let him take it. The last few pages were scribbled with half-words. Circles. Symbols. A shape he recognized.
A rune. Old. Twisted. Burned into wood years ago.
The same mark Ashwin used.
He closed the notebook. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you’d follow.”
“Damn right I would.” He stepped closer. “You think I can sleep with you beside me and not know the second you leave?”
Her voice softened. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Too late.”
The silence stretched again. Wind stirred through the trees like fingers brushing old stories back into motion.
She looked back at the Hollow Stone. “I don’t think it’s just visions. I think I’m remembering things that don’t belong to me. Or maybe things the town doesn’t want remembered.”
“That’s not impossible.”
She looked at him, lips parted. “You believe me?”
He nodded. “I believe you. ”
Her mouth trembled. “I don’t want to be one of them,” she whispered. “The girls in the journals. The ones who just… disappeared.”
“You won’t be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. ” His voice dropped low, fierce. “Because I’ll tear the damn forest down before I let anything take you.”
She blinked at him, stunned. She stepped into his space like she was done pretending they weren’t already woven into something too deep to name and he caught her.
His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her in tight, his cheek brushing against her hair. “Don’t scare me like that again,” he said into her crown.
Her hands fisted in the back of his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
They stood there as the woods bent around them, as the Hollow Stone hummed behind them, as the world paused and waited.
His fingers brushed the edge of her spine. “You’re not fine,” he murmured. “You’re holding it together with grit and sarcasm.”
“And duct tape,” she added.
He smiled. But the fear didn’t leave his bones. Because if the Hollow Stone had pulled her here, it meant something bigger was coming.
And he wasn’t sure even the strongest charm could stop it.