The wind in Hollowmire didn't whisper.
It warned.
Cold gusts swept low through twisted trunks, stirring dead leaves like brittle bones. The forest groaned under its own weight... trees leaning in like eavesdroppers, shadows pooling thick and wet between their roots.
Hollowmire doesn't welcome. It watches, and... waits.
Yael Vale moved through it anyway.
Her boots pressed soundlessly into moss covered ground, her dark cloak trailing like a shadow that didn't quite belong to her. She kept her head low beneath the hood, hands tucked tightly around the worn leather strap of her satchel. Inside it; dried hemlock, soulroot bark, and a single vial of shadow sap sealed with wax. Nothing special, at least not to anyone who didn't know better.
But she did.
The satchel was her excuse for walking this path tonight, just an herb order for an old midwife in Bellmare, that was all, nothing else. Certainly not the pull, certainly not the burn beneath her skin.
It had started two days ago... soft, like a tingle between her shoulder blades, now it was sharper, hotter. With every step deeper into the woods, it spread through her spine like wildfire.
She's waking, the mark seemed to say.
Beneath her cloak, beneath her blouse, a crescent shaped mark pulsed faintly... hidden just below her right shoulder. The edges shimmered like moonlight beneath water, its runes aglow with ancient light no one had ever translated. Not even her guardian.
Her guardian.
Yael's breath hitched, but she didn't stop walking.
She hadn't spoken of her in months, not aloud, not even to herself. The mute herbalist who had raised her... stern, silent, fiercely protective... vanished six moons ago. One day there, the next... gone. No note, no struggle, just an overturned cup of tea and the smell of burnt sage.
The villagers always whispered, whenever they thought she wasn't listening.
They called her Witch's whelp, forest bait, most times demon's daughter.
But Yael; she heard them all, still did, in her sleep, but they didn't know. They didn't know that the quiet woman they feared once stabbed a man in the throat with a bone needle for reaching toward Yael's shoulder when she was six. They didn't know that on stormy nights, she would wake Yael with eyes wide and urgent, fingers spelling fast in the dark;
"Never show the mark. Not even if it kills you."
So Yael hadn't. Ever.
Not even now, when it pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath her skin.
Not even when she heard the howl.
She froze.
It rolled across the forest like a long, shivering breath... low, mournful, and deep enough to hum inside her ribcage. Not quite distant, not even echoing. The kind of howl that knew where it was going. The kind that wasn't calling... it was marking.
Yael's grip tightened on her satchel. She scanned the woods, mist thickened in her path like a warning, still, she pressed on.
The trees closed in tighter, and the path narrowed. Bellmare was still half a mile west, the old watchtower just a little closer. She hadn't seen it in years... ruined, empty, half swallowed by ivy, but it was shelter... maybe.
Then, the snap of a branch.
Then another.
And then... nothing.
Yael turned slowly.
Fog clung low, curling around tree trunks. For one stretched second, nothing moved. Then...
They came.
Three blurs of muscle and fur erupted from the dark, wolves... but wrong. Their eyes gleamed red, their shoulders too large, their jaws too open. Rogues... twisted... foaming.
The first one lunged.
Yael didn't scream.
She moved.
Her legs shot forward before thought caught up. She veered off the path, tearing through brush and branch, leaping over roots she'd known since childhood. Her cloak caught on a thorn, she ripped it free. The rogues gave chase, snarling behind her.
She didn't look back.
She didn't have to.
They were gaining.
She cleared a fallen log and hit the clearing where the watchtower's skeleton stood like a broken sentinel in the mist, her boots skidded across the grass. She turned... and the largest rogue was already mid air.
She ducked too slow.
Its claws slashed across her shoulder.
Pain exploded down her back. She hit the ground hard, shoulder first, stars bursting behind her eyes. Blood seeped hot beneath her clothes, for a terrible heartbeat, she lay still.
Then...
Something else moved.
A blur. A snarl.
A silver wolf... huge, sleek, eyes glowing gold... slammed into the rogue mid leap. It dragged the beast away from her in a tangle of limbs and howls. Another wolf charged from the trees, white furred, fangs snapping. Then another. And another.
A pack.
Yael scrambled backward, one hand pressed to her wound, the other bracing against the cold ground. Her blood was hot, too hot. Something in it was shifting... no, glowing.
The rogues shrieked. The wolves tore them down in moments.
Then silence.
The silver wolf stepped forward.
Tall, regal, not bleeding. His eyes... those eyes... locked onto hers, and something inside her flared. Her mark burned like fire beneath her bandage.
She stared at him, wide eyed.
Then... light.
The wolf blurred, bent, shifted. In his place, a man stood... bare chested, obsidian haired, skin kissed by moonlight. He didn't speak, he didn't look at the corpses.
He looked at her.
And Yael panicked.
Her hand flew to her shoulder. Was it visible? Had the blood soaked through?
But he said nothing, he just stared, something unreadable flickered across his face.
Behind him, a second figure emerged... another man, this one smiling faintly, with auburn curls and sharp green eyes.
"She smells like… moonfire." He murmured.
Yael's stomach dropped.
No no no…
The obsidian haired man inhaled slowly. His eyes narrowed, his jaw locked.
But before he could speak, Yael pushed herself up, cloak dragging behind her. She staggered back, breath coming quick.
"Who… who are you?" She asked, voice raw.
The silver eyed man didn't answer.
He stepped forward.
And Yael ran, there was no point waiting.
---
She didn't remember how far she got, only the burn in her lungs and the heat on her back... heat not from pursuit, but from within. The mark was glowing now, she felt it through layers of fabric, her vision blurred.
She collapsed somewhere in the trees. Her last thought wasn't of rogues, or wolves.
It was of her guardian's voice, sharp and silent in her mind.
"If they see it, run."
---
She woke not in stone, not in fire, not in the heart of any Council...
...but in a cabin.
Wooden, small, smelling of ash and herbs. Her shoulder was bandaged, but her cloak remained untouched on a nearby stool. She could still feel the mark pulsing beneath her skin...
...her breath caught.
The mark.
Someone had seen her bare skin, maybe all of it. The runes, the shimmer. The part even she avoided in the mirror.
Her stomach turned cold. Her hand shot up, fingers tracing the edge of the bandage. Still glowing... barely... but covered now, too late.
Who touched me?
"You heal quick." A voice said.
She jolted upright. A young woman leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes like knives. Silver hair fell in a braid down her back, and though her stance was calm, everything about her said; dangerous.
Yael's voice cracked. "Who... who bandaged me?"
The woman raised a brow, then shrugged like it didn't matter. "We didn't have to check, it's scent's already leaking through your skin. It's getting stronger, by the next full moon? You'll stink of it."
Yael froze.
"What scent?"
"Your bond mark, sweetheart." The woman said, gesturing lazily toward her shoulder. "That little divine gift pulsing under your skin? We can smell it a mile away."
Her throat dried. "But I… My guardian said it wasn't visible, not unless..."
"Visible?" The woman cut in with a slight scoff. "You think we need to see it to know it's there? That's cute."
Yael looked down at the bandage, her pulse racing. Everything she'd been told... everything she thought she understood... it was breaking apart.
Why didn't she tell me this?
If wolves could smell it… if they had always been able to… what else had her guardian hidden from her?
Yael's Rose slowly, her gaze flicked to the window... bars. Not prison bars, reinforcement. This wasn't a cell... maybe it was protection... or containment.
"Where am I?" she asked.
The woman tilted her head.
"Edge of North Howl territory. You crossed a boundary you weren't meant to."
Yael frowned. "I didn't mean..."
"No one ever does." She pushed off the wall. "You'll stay here until someone decides what to do with you."
Yael's blood chilled, how fast did the woman turn feom being somewhat sweet to being chilly... forget it, she was nothing near sweet.
"I didn't do anything."
The silver haired woman stopped at the door. "Didn't you?"
"You were lucky." The woman added. "They almost got your throat."
Then her eyes dropped to Yael's shoulder.
And she left.