Chapter 4 Two Corpses

We came up out of the Hollow like two corpses crawling out of a grave.

The tunnel spat us into the world just before dawn, somewhere on the edge of the Cascades, miles from Blackthorn territory. The sky was the color of a healing bruise, and the air tasted of pine sap and freedom and terror.

Selene's hand was still in mine.

Neither of us had let go since the Hollow.

My arm had healed wrong. The place where I'd torn a chunk out of myself was a raised, silver-white scar shaped like a crescent moon. Every time the wind touched it, the bond flared-hot, possessive, alive. Selene felt it too; I saw her shiver.

"We can't go back," she said quietly. "Not ever."

"I know."

"They'll hunt us. Both sides. My father will call it mercy when he puts the silver bullet in my brain."

I stopped walking. I turned to her.

"Then we don't give him the chance."

She stared at me for a long moment, violet eyes wide, lips parted like she was seeing me for the first time.

"You really mean that," she whispered. "You'd burn the entire pack down for me."

"I'd burn the world down if it kept you breathing," I said. The words came out raw, honest, terrifying. "But right now I just need you alive long enough to help me kill this thing inside you. After that... we will renegotiate."

A crooked smile tugged at her mouth. "Romantic."

"Shut up."

She kissed me instead.

We stole a truck from a logging camp an hour later-old Ford, rusted red, keys still in the ignition because humans are trusting idiots. Selene hot-wired it anyway, out of habit. I drove. She navigated using a burner phone she'd lifted from one of the Covenant guards.

First stop: Seattle.

Because the only clue we had to Nyx was a name, a rumor, and a photograph taken twenty-three years ago in the underground beneath Pike Place Market.

A blind woman with no eyes-just smooth skin where they should have been-feeding pigeons with hands covered in old burn scars shaped like full moons.

The picture had been tucked into the lining of Selene's silk dress. A gift from the Covenant, or a curse. We weren't sure yet.

We hit the city at noon.

Seattle smelled wrong to wolf noses-exhaust and fried food and too many humans packed too tight-but underneath it was something else. Something ancient and watchful. The bond between us kept flickering like a dying bulb.

Selene went rigid in the passenger seat.

"It's here," she whispered. "The Hunger. It's... tasting the city."

I found parking in a garage that stank of piss and old blood. We changed in the stairwell-hoodies up, baseball caps low, anything to hide the glowing marks on our skin. Mine had started bleeding light again, thin threads of silver and black seeping through my shirt like veins.

We looked like runaway teenagers.

We felt like a walking apocalypse.

The underground tour entrance was closed for "renovations," which translated to yellow tape and a bored security guard who took one look at the hundred-dollar bill Selene slid into his palm and suddenly remembered he had somewhere else to be.

We descended alone.

Seattle's underground is a maze of brick corridors and shattered skylights, purple glass crunching under boots, the ghosts of opium dens and brothels still clinging to the walls. Every step echoed.

Selene's breathing grew shallow.

"She's close," she said. "I can smell her. Ash and moonlight and... regret."

We found the pigeons first.

Hundreds of them. A living carpet of grey and white feathers, cooing softly in a dead-end alley lit only by a single shaft of dusty light. In the center sat the woman from the photograph.

Nyx.

She hadn't aged a day.

Skin pale as bone, hair long and white, wearing a tattered black coat that might once have been velvet. Her face was smooth where eyes should be, just gentle curves of scar tissue. She tilted her head as we approached, like she heard heartbeats instead of footsteps.

"Little vessel," she rasped. Voices like smoke over gravel. "You brought me a leash made of love. How quaint."

Selene stepped forward. "We're here to end it."

Nyx laughed. The pigeons took flight in a thunder of wings.

"End it?" She rose, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. "Child, I swallowed the moon to cage it. I tore my own eyes out so I would never have to watch it feed again. And still it found you."

She turned her blind face toward me.

"And you, anchor. You smell like devotion and suicide. Delicious."

I bared my teeth. "Touch her and I'll-"

"You'll what?" Nyx stepped closer. The air around her rippled, distorted, like heat over asphalt. "Rip out your own heart and offer it up? You already started, didn't you?"

She touched my scarred forearm with ice-cold fingers.

The hunger roared inside Selene so loudly I felt it in my teeth.

Selene doubled over, claws slashing out, black veins racing up her arms.

"No," she gasped. "Not here-"

Nyx smiled without warmth.

"Run," she said. "Both of you. Before I decide to finish what I started three centuries ago."

We ran.

But the underground had changed.

Corridors twisted, bricks bled, and every turn led us deeper instead of out. The pigeons followed, a grey storm overhead. Nyx's laughter echoed from every direction.

We burst into an abandoned speakeasy-rotting velvet booths, shattered mirrors, a bar carved with crescent moons-and found we weren't alone.

Five wolves waited.

Blackthorn enforcers.

Led by Beta Rowan.

His eyes were dead. Grieving. Murderous.

"Selene," he said softly. "Your father sends his regards."

Silver nets flew.

I shifted mid-leap, clothes shredding, silver-grey wolf exploding out of my skin. I took the first net on my back-burning, searing-but rolled, flinging it off before it could tighten. Selene was slower; the Hunger was riding her hard. A net caught her mid-shift, silver threads biting deep.

She screamed.

The sound cracked something inside my skull.

I went feral.

Three enforcers went down in seconds-throats opened, spines snapped. Rowan shifted into a massive black wolf and met me head-on. We crashed together, fangs and fury, blood spraying across the bar.

He was bigger. Stronger. Trained.

I was faster. And I was done losing people I loved.

I feinted high, went low, locked my jaws around his foreleg and twisted until bone shattered. He howled. I used the moment to slam him into the bar, glass exploding.

Selene was on her knees, silver net smoking against her skin, black veins crawling up her throat.

Rowan shifted back, human and bleeding.

"You can't save her, omega," he spat. "She's a walking graveyard."

I shifted too, naked and bleeding and past caring.

"Maybe," I said. "But she's my graveyard."

I looked at Selene.

Her eyes were fully black now.

The remaining two enforcers backed away slowly.

"Rowan," one whispered. "We should go-"

Too late.

Selene rose.

The net melted off her like water.

She walked forward, barefoot over broken glass, and the temperature plummeted so fast my breath fogged.

"Uncle," she said, voice layered with a thousand hungry ghosts. "You smell like grief. I think I'll start with your tongue."

Rowan tried to shift again. Couldn't.

The Hunger held him frozen.

Selene reached for his face.

I stepped between them.

"Selene," I said softly. "Look at me."

The blackness flickered.

"Elara," she rasped, fighting. "Get out of the way."

"No."

Tears-actual tears-cut tracks down her bloodless cheeks.

"I'm going to kill him," she said. "Then everyone else. Then you. I can't stop it."

"You can." I took her face in both hands. "Because I'm not moving."

Rowan tried to run.

Selene's hand shot out, claws punching straight through his shoulder, pinning him to the wall like a butterfly.

He screamed.

Selene leaned in, mouth opening wide-too wide-fangs lengthening into something from nightmares.

I kissed her.

Not gentle.

I kissed her like I was drowning and she was the only air left in the world.

The hunger shrieked.

Power exploded outward-mirrors shattered, the bar split in half, pigeons rained from the ceiling dead.

Selene's claws retracted from Rowan's shoulder.

She collapsed into my arms, shaking, human again.

Rowan dropped, whimpering.

The two surviving enforcers bolted.

We didn't stop them.

Nyx's voice drifted from the shadows.

"Interesting," she said. "Love as a weapon. Crude. Effective."

She stepped into the ruined bar, coat swirling.

"You want to kill hunger?" she asked. "Then you need the Blade That Cuts Moonlight. Forged from the first silver the Goddess ever wept. Hidden where no wolf would ever look."

"Where?" Selene demanded, voice raw.

Nyx smiled.

"Inside the heart of the man who made the bargain three hundred years ago."

She pointed one scarred finger at the far wall.

A portrait hung there, half burned, half intact.

A man with violet eyes and a cruel mouth.

The first Blackthorn Alpha.

Selene's ancestor.

And-he looked exactly like Alpha Caelan.

Nyx laughed at our faces.

"Your father," she said, "has been lying to you your entire life, little vessel. He is the bargain. He is the cage. And he is coming for you both."

The ground shook.

Far above, sirens wailed.

Then Nyx did something neither of us expected.

She knelt.

Not to us.

To me.

"Anchor," she whispered, pressing something cold and sharp into my palm. A single black feather that hummed with power. "When the time comes, cut deep. Cut true. And do not hesitate."

She stood.

"Now run. He's almost here."

We ran.

Up collapsing stairs, through abandoned tunnels, into the blinding grey daylight of Seattle streets.

Behind us, the underground began to collapse-stone screaming, dust billowing like smoke.

We didn't look back.

We had twenty-four hours until the new moon.

We had a feather, a name, and the knowledge that the man who raised Selene was the monster we needed to kill.

And somewhere in the distance, church bells began to ring backwards.

The hunger was laughing inside both of us now.

And it sounded just like her father.