Page 1 of Ravaging Red (Monsters of the Hollow Realm #1)

The Woods Do Not Sleep

RED

T he woods were never truly quiet.

Not in the way city people think the woods should sound.

You know, the usual songs of birds chirping, leaves rustling in the wind, and the occasional cricket.

But not in the Black Hollow Woods. They had a life of their own.

At night, they pulsed. A steady, haunted rhythm that beat through the mossy undergrowth and stretched into the hollows of the trees.

The woods never slept. They simply watched and waited for their next prey.

And I was foolish enough to walk straight into them.

Wrapped in my crimson cloak, the one my Nana stitched for me before her mind began to fray, I stepped off the gravel road and onto the winding path that led deep into the woods.

I paused, staring into the darkness that lay ahead of me, and a shudder ran through me.

The path seemed to wind into itself in a tangle of barren twigs, and in the center of that, a black hole.

The air shifted, instantly becoming cooler, and quieting, as though the the woods themselves were holding their breath. But I couldn’t let fear stop me. Not today.

Beneath my feet, the gravel gave way to wooden planks, slick with morning dew and softened by rain and moss. The boardwalk stretched ahead, a long forgotten trail that snaked through the trees, tempting you onto what was called the Witch’s Trail.

The trees were tall, ancient things. Their trunks gnarled and bent, and they leaned inward toward the path, they looked like old decrepit fingers reaching out to grab you.

Moss clung to them in thick, velvet drapes, and pale green algae curled up their sides forming rune-like patterns.

The canopy above was dense, a surreal umbrella of crooked branches that filtered the sunlight into shards of silvery mist, making the entire woods seem caught in a hush between worlds.

Every step I took echoed faintly along the planks, the rhythm swallowed quickly by the heavy stillness of the woods. I swore I could hear water in the distance. A soft, gurgling, the only form of life in this godforsaken place.

I shivered, wrapping the cloak tighter around me. There was something unearthly about this place. And I quickly came to realize that the path I was on didn’t just lead deeper into the woods, it led somewhere else entirely.

The hem of the cloak skimmed just above my boots, already damp from the wet morning dew. Every brush of fabric against my thighs was like a warning for me to rethink this. To slow down.

I wasn’t supposed to be out here.

That was the rule.

You are not to enter the woods after dark.

Everyone in town made sure their neighbor knew that the Hollow Woods were dangerous. Mothers whispered it into their children's ears with their bedtime prayers, and fathers made sure their daughters never neared the edge. And yet, here I was. Breaking the one rule everyone knew you didn’t break.

But what choice did I have?

Mom was too upset to go herself. Nana had wandered off again, a full day gone now. This time, she'd left behind a note, scrawled in her shaky, looping handwriting that made little sense, but the meaning was clear enough:

The woods are calling. I hear him once again. I must go.

Him.

That word curled in my gut bringing with it a sinking feeling, and fear followed. The word encompassed something dark and ominous. But Nana always talked in riddles, especially these last few years. You never knew if what she was saying came from memory, or delusion.

The doctors called it Alzheimer's. I called it a curse.

As a teenager, I thought she’d lost her mind.

All that muttering to shadows. All her strange rituals and murmured warnings, then there was her obsession with the hour before twilight.

The way she’d touch her fingers to her lips when certain names were spoken, as if saying them aloud could summon something that was best left dormant.

I told myself it was just superstition, her mind unraveling quietly in the dark.

I would laugh it off back then. But now, at twenty-two, the laughter dried up. Because I feel things too.

Things that twist in my gut when the sun dips low and the hush falls too suddenly over the town.

There’s a pull beneath the earth, a shift in the air when the wind forgets its direction.

The sensation of something unseen brushing too close to my skin when I’m alone, leaving me wondering if I’m ever truly alone.

Sometimes things would tug at the edge of my reasoning, and they whispered in languages I never learned.

The kind of things you don’t talk about in daylight.

The kind of things that press against the walls of your room at night, listening.

I whisper to the dark without knowing why, and sometimes… I think it answers.

I don’t speak of these things, not even to myself. There are things I’ve done lately that I won’t dare to name. Things my Nana warned me about when I was still too young to understand that belief and madness aren’t opposites. They're mirrors.

These unsaid things hunger, and they watch. They remember her, and somehow, they remember me.

Cursed things.

She used to warn me about them in her riddles, her eyes glassy and distant, as though she were remembering something too terrible to name. But maybe she wasn’t so crazy after all. Maybe the madness was just a different kind of truth.

My truth was that I had to find her. I couldn’t leaver her here alone.

I clutched my bag tighter. It was filled with useless items I thought might comfort her.

Items that might bring her memories back, allowing her to return.

A blanket, her favorite dried cherries, the lavender soap she used to lather on her skin, a scent I always loved.

Maybe I brought them for myself, some part of me needing the nostalgia to keep me sane.

But sanity felt slippery this evening. Something had shifted in the air around me, and it made the hair in the back of my neck stand on end.

At first, it was just a tremor, like a static crawling beneath my skin.

Then came the scent. A tinge of what could only be described as wild heat.

It came from something feral that didn’t belong in the human world.

It was thick enough to choke on, to smear against my lips like a kiss I hadn’t ever been given.

I stopped walking, a chill racing down my spine despite the rising warmth inside me.

“What the hell…” I murmured, fingers brushing the hollow of my throat.

It felt like someone was watching me.

No… stalking me.

The crickets had gone quiet. The owls had stopped their calls. Every sound in the forest was silently holding its breath.

My thighs clenched, and I swallowed back a moan. It surprised me how my body reacted, how my nipples peaked, how an electric heat coiled low in my belly, slick and slow and terrifying.

I’d heard about desire before I read about it in books. I listened to my friends’ whisper about it against the lockers that lined the hallways, glancing around and making sure they weren't caught talking about something so taboo. But I had never experienced it. Not truly.

I wasn’t some naive girl. There’d been a boy once, back in high school.

He’d cornered me behind the science building after the last period, his breath warm and eager, his gaze flicking from my eyes to my lips, as if trying to figure out what to do with them.

He leaned in, slow and shaking, and I remember the way his fingers brushed against my cheek, all clumsy and uncertain.

Our mouths barely met, when the sharp clang of a door flung open behind us, ruining it all.

A teacher’s voice barked out our names, and we jolted apart like we’d been caught stealing.

He never tried again. And in the last few years, I never really let anyone else get that close. So I remained untouched. Not because I was afraid, but because I’d never found someone who made my blood hum, someone who pulled that feeling out of me. That ache and need.

Instead, I lost myself in books letting those dark heroes sweep me off my feet. Bikers, cowboys and the occasional monster accompanied me beneath the covers. Imagining them between my thighs was my own little secret.

But this feeling…

This wasn’t desire.

It was something far more dangerous.

It curled through me like black smoke, thick and suffocating. It clawed at the inside of my ribs, making my skin feel too tight, too warm. My breath caught, my body vibrated, and that strong sensation of belonging to someone else ran down my spine.

No, this wasn’t some innocent kiss behind a school building.

This was a craving. A possession.

And I knew, deep in the pit of my soul, that once it claimed me, it would never let me go.

Whatever had been waiting for me in these woods, had just found me.

I paused, listening intently, turning in a slow circle, eyes scanning the trees, but I saw nothing except shadows. Still… I felt it. The heavy presence, undoubtedly male. It felt ancient and it licked at me. Invisible, yet very real.

And then I heard it. A low and soft-like growl against my ear.

Mine.

I gasped at the word, stumbling a step back and nearly tripping over the hem of my cloak. I searched the woods but there was no one else around me. No one could possibly be here.

Suddenly, a glimpse of a dark blur moved between the tree line. My heart slammed against my ribs, each beat painful and fast.

“Nana?” I called out, though my voice cracked on the word. “Is that you?”

Nobody replied. But the air grew hotter. Wetter.

I took a deep breath and regretted it instantly. The smell was stronger now. A blend of woodsmoke and musk. It smelled as if the woods had exhaled right into my mouth. I buzzed with an unwanted arousal as it ran through my veins, heating up my body.

This didn’t make sense. Not only was I scared, I was oddly, and shamefully , turned on.